Misusing power as UNSC member: India blocks proscription of state-sponsored terrorist

UNITED NATIONS: In a blatant misuse of its power as member UN Security Council, India has blocked a proposal to proscribe an India based terrorist, Gobinda Patnaik Duggivalasa, according to the informed sources.

As per the procedures of the 15-member Sanctions Committee, the consent of all council members is required to accept a listing proposal.

The proposal for listing of Gobinda Patnaik Duggivalasa was tabled in the committee because of his role in planning, financing and supporting terrorist attacks in Pakistan, including the July 13, 2018 suicide bomb attack in Mastung, Balochistan.

Over 160 individuals lost their lives and more than 200 were injured in the attack. Duggivalasa was also involved in suicide attack on a bus carrying Chinese nationals in Dalbandin, Balochistan, on 11 August 2018, the sources said.

This individual is part of India’s state-sponsored terrorist network responsible for unifying various Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) factions in the past in Afghanistan, they said. Monitoring team focusing on the global threat posed by Al-Qaeda, Daesh and related groups have highlighted increasing cross-border terrorist threat from proscribed TTP to Pakistan, using the Afghan soil as result of the re-unification of the group.

Pakistan, according to the sources, has shared concrete evidence on the involvement of Indian intelligence agencies in sponsoring UN-listed terrorist organisations such as TTP and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) in cross-border terrorist attacks against Pakistani military and civilian targets.

India’s blocking of the listing proposal, including by asserting political pressure on other members of the committee, shows India’s dubious stance on terrorism as well as its misuse of the UN’s counter-terrorism mechanisms, the sources.

Facing growing criticism in the international media about its atrocities in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K) as well as mainstreaming of Islamophobia in its political discourse, Indian diplomats have been making the UN a venue for peddling New Delhi’s disinformation campaign against Pakistan to divert attention from its domestic situation.