PillaiSpeak: Home secretary’s “paragliders” remark in a Canadian newspaper draws international media attention

HOME secretary GK Pillai’s reported remark that militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba had bought “as many as 150 paragliders” from China and the Gulf to launch attack during the Commonwealth Games, has attracted Western media’s attention. The Canadian newspaper, The Star, which broke the story, mentioned how Pillai said in an interview on Tuesday that “it’s very worrisome” that the paragliders were bought to launch airborne attacks on athletes, tourists and visiting politicians at the Commonwealth Games.
The paper has further elaborated how paragliders are controlled by a pilot who’s suspended on a harness under a special controllable parachute. Modern paragliders can travel as many as 500 kilometres and stay in the air for up to 11 hours.

An Wall Street Journal item, in an analytical piece, has drawn a comparison between a typical Indian bureaucrat versus Pillai. “India’s bureaucrats are generally known for being pretty tight-lipped. When they give press conferences, they often stick to repeating well-established policy mantra. When they grant one-on-one interviews, they’re quick to insist that large chunks of it are off-the-record or can only be attributed to “a source.” Even official spokesmen frequently request anonymity while stating little more than basic fact…But GK Pillai, the country’s top security civil servant, appears to be cut from different material,” the WSJ report said. 

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