India blasts Pak for supporting terror

Valley burns: New Delhi issues dmarche; summons Basit

India on Tuesday issued a démarche to Pakistan, citing the recent arrest of a terrorist in Jammu & Kashmir as proof of continued export of terror from the neighbouring country.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar summoned Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit and issued him the démarche: “ The government of India strongly protests against the continued infiltration from Pakistan of trained terrorists with instructions to carry out attacks”.

Jaishankar cited the recent arrest of Bahadur Ali, a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist from Pakistan, in Jammu & Kashmir as proof, Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Vikas Swarup said.  Jaishankar conveyed to Basit that continued infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan to India was “contrary to assurances” given by the leaders of the neighbouring country at the highest level.
 
Ali was arrested on July 25 along with an AK-47 rifle, live ammunition, a grenade launcher and grenades, apart from sophisticated communication equipment. The weapons and other materials recovered from him were mostly made in Pakistan, with some having origins in other countries. During interrogation, he identified himself as the son of Mohammed Haneef, a resident of Jia Bagga village at Raiwind in the Lahore district of Punjab province in Pakistan. 

“Ali has confessed to our authorities that after training in LeT camps, he was infiltrated into India. He was thereafter in touch with an ‘operations room’ of LeT, receiving instructions to attack Indian security personnel and carry out other terrorist attacks in India,” said Swarup.

The MEA spokesperson also said that Ali had also written to High Commissioner of Pakistan in New Delhi, introducing himself as a citizen of the neighbouring country, requesting “legal aid and assistance to meet his family”.

Opposition slams PM’s statement

Reacting to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement on Kashmir, Opposition parties in the Valley on Tuesday said, “only utterances won’t work,” DHNS reports from Srinagar.

The prime minister, who broke his silence over the month-long unrest that has claimed 57 lives, showed willingness to hold dialogue under the framework of ‘insaniyat (humanity), jamhuriyat (democracy) and Kashmiriyat’.

The Opposition Congress said: “Killing innocent people and imposing indefinite curfew in Kashmir is in no sense ‘insaniyat and jamooriyat’.”