expecting some sort of display of the mutilated bodies and photographic evidence is just insane. surprised to see you think this would be even a remote possibility. even if it was, pakistan denies the killings entirely…so to whom is the evidence to be presented and for what? such a display didn’t happen during kargil with capt. saurabh kalia which was an indisputable case and far more gruesome. again i don’t understand how this is difficult to believe…it’s not the case of one “narrative” vs. another. it’s a binary proposition: head or no head.
whether it was blown out of proportion is a different matter. it’s also easy for you to say it was but the context in india is post-26/11 without retaliation. your reading of this is an election year issue is just wrong - elections were mostly finished very early in 2012 and there is nothing special about the handful of 2013 state assembly elections. more importantly it was not utilized in any meaningful way by politicians. you are speculating about what might theoretically make sense - the problem is that it’s just not what happened. in reality it was politically damaging to the ruling administration’s peace-at-all-costs approach to pakistan and was very embarrassing for manmohan singh. in fact, they had every incentive to lie and say there was no beheading…not to lie and say there was.