'Attempt to hoodwink': India rejects Pakistan's allegation over school bus blast in Balochistan

New Delhi: After Islamabad blamed India for the death of at least five persons, including school children, in an explosion at Khuzdar in Balochistan in southwest Pakistan, New Delhi dismissed the allegation, calling it yet another attempt by the neighbouring country’s government to hoodwink the world.

Islamabad has long been blaming India’s intelligence agencies for the unrest in Balochistan, a province in Pakistan. The latest allegation about New Delhi’s role in the explosion targeting a school bus in Khuzdar in Balochistan, however, came just after India carried out Operation Sindoor targeting terrorist camps in Pakistan as well as areas under illegal occupation of Pakistan on May 7.

The Pakistan Army accused New Delhi of orchestrating and India’s ‘proxies’ in Balochistan of carrying out the attack, which killed three schoolgirls and two adults. A spokesman of the military establishment of Pakistan alleged that India, after suffering setbacks in the recent cross-border military offensives and counter-offensives, used its ‘proxies’ to carry out the attack. He said that the “planners, abettors and executors of the cowardly attack sponsored by India” in Pakistan would be hunted down.

New Delhi strongly dismissed the latest propaganda by Islamabad.

“India rejects the baseless allegations made by Pakistan regarding Indian involvement with the incident in Khuzdar earlier today,” Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi, said in response to queries from journalists about the allegation by Islamabad.

“India condoles the loss of lives in all such incidents,” the MEA spokesperson said in New Delhi, adding: “However, in order to divert attention from its reputation as the global epicentre of terrorism and to hide its own gross failings, it has become second nature for Pakistan to blame India for all its internal issues.”

He said that Pakistan’s attempt to hoodwink the world and blame India was doomed to fail.

The cross-border terrorism sponsored by Pakistan in India of late brought the two South Asian nations to the brink of war.

In response to the killing of 26 people, mostly tourists, by a gang of Pakistani and Pakistan-trained terrorists at Baisaran near Pahalgam in J&K on April 22, India on May 7 launched Operation Sindoor targeting the terrorist camps both in the neighbouring nation as well as in the areas illegally occupied by it.

Pakistan, however, responded by carrying out retaliatory strikes, targeting the civilians living along the Line of Control and the undisputed stretch of the border as well as the military facilities in India. The armed forces of India foiled and effectively responded to all the strikes by Pakistan. The offensives and counter-offensives came to a halt on May 10, after the two sides reached an understanding.