Referring to the revelations made by the former governor of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) about the Pulwama incident, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday urged the international community to take notice of India's dangerous brinkmanship that could have led to disastrous consequences for the region.
Taking to Twitter, the premier said that ex-governor IIOJK Satya Pal Malik's revelations about the reality of the Pulwama incident exposed India’s designs against Pakistan.
Malik, who is a former member of the Narendra Modi-led government, alleged during an interview that the Indian prime minister silenced him on the security lapses which led to the 2019 Pulwama attack.
The prime minister maintained that the revelations showed how the Indian government exploited the situation for political gains, which vindicated Pakistan’s position.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Office, in a statement, said the disclosures demonstrated how the Indian leadership had habitually used the bogey of terrorism from Pakistan to advance its sham victimhood narrative and the Hindutva agenda, clearly for domestic political gains.
“We hope that the international community would take cognizance of the latest revelations and see through India’s propaganda campaign against Pakistan driven by selfish political considerations and based on lies and deceit,” it said.
The FO said it was time India be held accountable for the actions that imperilled regional peace in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack.
A day earlier, Pakistan demanded answers from the Indian government after the revelations made by the former governor of IIOJK.
According to a statement issued by Foreign Office, Malik's — who was governor during the Pulwama terrorist attack — revelations have once again vindicated Pakistan’s stance on the Pulwama attack.
"His disclosures demonstrate how the Indian leadership has habitually used the bogey of terrorism from Pakistan to advance its sham victimhood narrative and the Hindutva agenda, clearly for domestic political gains," the FO said.
The former governor said Modi did it so he could benefit from the move and blame the attack on Pakistan by concealing India's own mistakes in the attack.
Attributing the attack to the "incompetence and negligence of the Indian system" and CRPF, Malik said that the request for airlifting the soldiers had been refused by the home ministry, while the sanitisation before the transfer by road was inefficient.
"I had sensed that all of this onus will be diverted towards Pakistan so it's better to keep quiet," Malik said, confirming that the strategy was to derive electoral benefit for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the incident.
On February 14, 2019, around 40 Indian soldiers of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were killed and dozens injured at the Srinagar-Jammu Highway in the Awantipora area in the Pulwama district of the IIOJK, an attack which is dubbed as the deadliest in Indian forces in over a decade.
The soldiers were killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) went off as a convoy of military vehicles drove by, some 20 kilometres from the main city of Srinagar.
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