Pakistan has ‘irrefutable’ proof of India sponsoring ‘terrorism’

Islamabad says it has obtained documents that show New Delhi met with and funded members of banned Pakistani Taliban and Baloch militant groups in a bid to sabotage China’s $65 billion Belt and Road investment plan.

Islamabad has said it has “irrefutable” evidence of India sponsoring “terrorism” aimed at destabilising Pakistan and targeting its economic partnership with China – that it will share with the world.

In a joint press conference in the capital of Islamabad on Saturday, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, along with military spokesman Major General Babar Iftikhar, said that Indian intelligence agents were operating out of neighbouring Afghanistan to plan attacks within Pakistani borders.

Pakistan and India routinely accuse each other of targeting the other, but this was a rare time that Pakistani officials said they had prepared a mountain of evidence to back up the charges against their South Asian rival.

“India was allowing its land to be used against Pakistan for terrorism,” said Qureshi, adding that New Delhi was also planning attacks from “neighbouring countries.”

“We are now presenting irrefutable evidence to the world to demonstrate the Indian state’s direct sponsorship of terrorism in Pakistan that has resulted in the deaths of innocent Pakistanis,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told media alongside the spokesperson for the country’s military.

India’s RAW ‘targeting’ Chinese projects

The Pakistani civilian and military leaders said that India’s Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence agency was operating a network of agents and training camps through its diplomatic missions in Afghanistan who were financing, training, and equipping militants operating inside Pakistan.

A dossier of evidence would be shared with the United Nations and other international agencies, Qureshi added.

Iftikhar, who heads the media and public relations office for Pakistan’s armed forces, presented some of the dossier’s evidence purporting to show India’s involvement in attacks within Pakistan, including bank receipts showing funding and photos showing alleged perpetrators of attacks inside the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

The military spokesman also accused India of sponsoring banned organisations including UN-designated terrorist groups Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, and Allah Nazar’s Baloch Liberation Army.

He also played an audio clip purporting to record a conversation between an Indian intelligence official and Allah Nazar Baloch.

Iftikhar added that Indian intelligence agents were especially targeting Chinese development projects that have come with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Pakistan: India handled Gwadar attackers

He said that the attackers who led a deadly assault on a luxury hotel in the southwestern city of Gwadar in May 2019, were in telephone contact with Indian intelligence handlers before and during the assault.

Chinese companies operate the Pakistani city’s key port facilities and it is considered a keystone of major Pakistani-Chinese trade projects.

There was no immediate comment from Indian officials to the statement by Pakistan’s government.

New Delhi has likewise accused Pakistan of sponsoring militant groups that have carried out attacks inside its borders in recent years, a claim Islamabad denies.

The allegations come at a time of heightened tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours after at least 10 civilians and five security personnel were killed in cross-border shelling along the Line of Control, the de facto border in disputed Kashmir on Friday.

The mountainous Muslim-majority Himalayan region is a source of the longstanding conflict between the two nuclear powers.

PM Khan to visit Afghanistan

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, Gran Hewad, said on Saturday that Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is planning to visit Afghanistan next week.

The Foreign Ministry said that this will be Khan’s first visit to Kabul as Pakistan’s prime minister.

It wasn’t mentioned whether he would raise Pakistan’s concerns over India.