Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari targeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a press conference on Thursday while responding to New Delhi’s criticism of Islamabad’s role in aiding cross-border terrorism against its western neighbor.
“Osama Bin Laden has died but the butcher of Gujarat — Narendra Modi — is still alive and has become the prime minister of India,” Zardari told media persons in New York, as he reacted to Jaishankar’s remarks on the previous day.
2002 Gujarat Riots
In 2002, Gujarat witnessed sectarian clashes between Hindus and Muslims after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims to the town of Ayodhya was torched by a mob. At the time, Narendra Modi was the state chief of Gujarat.
His ardent critics accused him of looking the other way amid statewide clashes between Hindus and Muslims, which led to numerous deaths.
However, a special investigation team (SIT) formed to investigate Modi’s culpability in the riots exonerated him, a decision later upheld by India’s Supreme Court.
Zardari on Thursday claimed Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government didn’t believe in the ideology of global non-violence icon and freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi but rather in the doctrine of his assassin, Nathuram Godse.
Godse was a self-proclaimed Hindu nationalist who shot Gandhi dead on January 30, 1948, just months after both India and Pakistan gained independence from Great Britain.
Lahore Blast Accusations
In his press conference, Zardari also claimed that Islamabad has “irrefutable evidence” about New Delhi’s alleged involvement in a Lahore bomb blast last June.
The blast took place near the residence of Hafiz Saeed, co-founder of UN-designated terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)** and the mastermind of Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008 that left 166 people dead. Saeed presently heads the Islamist charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), widely recognized as a front for LeT.
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, meanwhile, squarely rejected the charge that New Delhi was involved in perpetrating terrorism against Islamabad, suggesting Pakistan itself was an “epicenter” of global terrorism.
*a notorious terrorist group banned in Russia and worldwide
** banned in Russia