Indian Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur on Monday said that Islamabad is under mounting pressure from New Delhi on the issue of cross-border terrorism.
The Indian official was responding to recent statements by Pakistan that have triggered outrage in New Delhi.
"(Pakistan foreign minister) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s statement and Pakistan minister’s (Shazia Marri’s) threat show the pressure India’s strict actions and probes have put on terrorism. Pakistan must stop backing terrorism and terror funding or else they themselves will face the heat of it,” Thakur stated during a press conference in New Delhi.
Pakistan FM Triggers Diplomatic Row With His Remark on Modi
Addressing a press conference at the UN last week, Zardari triggered a diplomatic scandal after calling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “butcher of Gujarat” in a reference to 2002 riots in the west Indian state when Modi was the state chief.
While Modi’s critics accused him of complicity in the Hindu-Muslim sectarian clashes that left numerous people dead, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe absolved the Indian leader of any wrongdoing, and the Supreme Court of India later too upheld the report.
Zardari’s statement evoked countrywide protests in India, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also holding a demonstration at the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. Separately, the Indian Foreign Ministry said that Zardari’s statement marked a “new low, even for Pakistan”.
Over weekend, Pakistan’s federal Minister Shazia Atta Marri pointed out to New Delhi that Islamabad does possess a nuclear bomb and that its “nuclear status isn’t meant to remain silent”, a remark that has been construed as a nuke threat by obervers in India.
Thakur also waded into the ongoing war of words between India and Pakistan as he highlighted New Delhi's “zero tolerance approach” towards terrorism since PM Modi came to federal power in 2014.
He also noted that Prime Minister Modi has also consistently urged the global community to form a “unified response against terrorism”.
Thakur underlined New Delhi has carried out surgical strikes across the Line of Control (LoC) against militants in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in 2016, in response to a deadly terrorist strike at an Indian Army camp in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir. New Delhi maintains the attack was carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM)*, whose leadership it suspects is based in Pakistan.
The Indian minister also said that the Indian Air Force (IAF) also carried out cross-border strikes against JeM in February 2019, in response to the bombing of an Indian paramilitary convoy by the terrorist group the same month.
To prove that India’s “decisive actions” against terrorism have yielded “definitive results”, Thakur highlighted that the number of terrorist attacks in J&K has dropped by 168 per cent since 2014, while the conviction in cases of terror financing has increased to 94 per cent during the same period.
*banned in Russia and other states