Indian Army Asks Soliders To Get Off Whatsapp After Internal Messages Appear On Social Media

The Indian Army has asked its personnel to stop using the highly popular messaging app, WhatsApp after a number of unsigned messages showed up on social media sites following the Uri encounter in Jammu and Kashmir.

According to national news network NDTV, these messages are thought to have been widely circulated on WhatsApp by serving officers, possibly an indicator of discontentment with PM Modi's remarks on Monday where he is accused by the opposition of politicising the Budgam shootout where two innocent young men had been shot dead by the Army.

One of the messages says, "He proves that all he has is a political agenda and rightly so also as he needs the numbers in the houses of parliament. But the army is just a tool and that too a dispensable one."

Senior Army officials told NDTV that “this is a psychological warfare operation meant to spring disenchantment in the Army. They say they cannot identify the source of the messages since WhatsApp's servers are in the United States.”

According to the Army, "all the messages are part of a malafide operation....None of the messages have been written by serving officers of the Indian Army. Army Headquarters is monitoring social media 24/7."