India counters Pak’s ‘deranged fantasy’, rebuts claims on ‘cowardly’ attacks

NEW DELHI: Pakistan’s efforts to blame India for allegedly carrying out a drone attack on the Nankana Sahib gurdwara and for the shelling of a gurdwara in Poonch are part of a disinformation campaign to give a “communal hue” to the situation, foreign secretary Vikram Misri said on Friday Misri rubbished Pakistan’s denial of drone attacks on Indian cities, civilian infrastructure and some military targets on Thursday night as another “example of their duplicity” and told a media briefing that Indian forces “responded proportionately, adequately and responsibly” to the strikes.

The foreign secretary, who briefed the media on Operation Sindoor for the third consecutive day alongside Col Sofiya Qureshi of the army and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh of the air force, said some members of the Sikh community and two students were killed when shelling by Pakistani troops hit a gurdwara and a school run by Carmelite missionaries in Poonch district.

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Referring to information from Pakistan about India targeting the Nankana Sahib gurdwara in a drone attack, Misri said: “This is again yet another blatant lie and part of Pakistan’s disinformation campaign. As we saw in the Pahalgam attack, Pakistan is again trying desperately to impart a communal hue to the situation with an intention to create discord.”

He added, “We have seen the Pakistani side targeting and shelling places of worship with a particular design. This includes gurdwaras, convents and temples. This is a new low even for Pakistan.”

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A shell fired by Pakistani forces on May 7 landed near Christ School, run by the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, a congregation in Poonch, and killed two students and injured their parents. Another shell struck a Christian convent of nuns from the Congregation of the Mother of Carmel, damaging water tanks and destroying solar panels. “The school happened to be closed at the time fortunately, otherwise more losses would have occurred,” Misri said.

Misri said Pakistan had also made the “preposterous and outrageous claim” that India’s armed forces were targeting cities such as Amritsar. “This is nothing but a desperate attempt by Pakistan to disown its acts of aggression, but it is also true to type in its effort to deceive and mislead the world. It will not succeed,” he said. Such claims of India attacking its own cities “is the kind of deranged fantasy that only the Pakistani state can come up with”, he said.

He described the Pakistan military’s targeting of cities and civilian infrastructure as “cowardly” and “provocative and escalatory actions”. Indian officials have already made it clear that there will be a firm response to any escalatory actions by Pakistan.

Misri also provided details of external affairs minister S Jaishankar’s continuing conversations with counterparts from around the world to explain the actions taken by India to retaliate against the Pahalgam terror attack of April 22 that killed 26 civilians. The central themes of these conversations were the “targeted measures” taken by India and its determination to firmly counter any escalatory moves by Pakistan.

Referring to Jaishankar’s phone call with US secretary of state Marco Rubio on Thursday night, Misri said the external affairs minister appreciated the US’s commitment to work with India in the fight against terrorism. Jaishankar also spoke to his British counterpart David Lammy on Friday, with the discussions centring around India’s zero tolerance policy while countering terrorism.

Misri responded to a question about the strike on the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s (JeM) main base at Bahawalpur in Pakistan’s Punjab province and the group’s links to the 2002 kidnapping and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl by saying that the JeM was in directly or indirectly responsible for the death of the reporter.

“But the real connection is through Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British Pakistani jihadi who was held in India but was finally released in 2000 and he was the person who lured Daniel Pearl to his...murder,” Misri said, referring to one of three terrorists India was forced to free in exchange for passengers on an Indian airliner that was hijacked from Kathmandu to Kandahar in 1999.

“So, these are all obviously connected figures, connected individuals, connected institutions and the attack on that facility of the JeM in Bahawalpur is, I would imagine, a fitting part of this unfortunate incident,” he said.