'We identify ourselves as Indians': CRPF responds to media report

NEW DELHI: The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on Friday hit back at a media report which carried a caste-based break-up of the jawans killed in the Pulwama attack on February 14.
Moses Dhinakaran, DIG CRPF reacting to the media report said that they identify themselves as "Indians". Calling the report "pathetic division of caste, color, and religion", Dhinakaran said the divide doesn't exist in their blood.
"You should strictly refrain from insulting all the martyrs. They are not statistics for your demeaning and meaningless write-up," he wrote on his Twitter.

The report published in a magazine had said that most of the jawans killed in the Pulwama attacked belonged to the lower caste. "The 40 jawans were primarily from lower-caste communities. In all, they comprised 19 jawans from Other Backward Classes (or backward castes), seven from Scheduled Castes, five from Scheduled Tribes, four from upper-caste backgrounds, one high-caste Bengali, three Jat Sikhs, and one Muslim. So, only five out of the 40 jawans, or 12.5 percent, came from Hindu upper-caste backgrounds," the report said.
The media report triggered outrage on social media as well.


Forty CRPF personnel were killed and five injured on February 14 in one of the deadliest terror strikes in Jammu and Kashmir when a Jaish-e-Mohammad suicide bomber blew up an explosive-laden vehicle near their bus in Pulwama district.