Pakistan admits to role in Pulwama terror plot
We hit India in their home, says senior minister, in the first damning admission of Pak hand in the deadly Feb 14 attack
In a sensational admission, a senior Pakistani minister on Thursday admitted that the country was responsible for the Pulwama terrorist attack in Jammu & Kashmir in 2019 that killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel and brought the two countries to the brink of a war.
“Humne Hindustan ko ghus ke maara (We hit India in their home). Our success in Pulwama, is a success of this nation under
the leadership of Imran Khan. You and us are all part of that success,” science and technology minister Fawad Chaudhry said in the National Assembly or lower house of Pakistan’s parliament.
Chaudhry, a close aide of Prime Minister Imran Khan, made the remarks a day after Opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ayaz Sadiq said that foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s
“legs were shaking” when he told a meeting last year that India would attack if Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, shot down in a dogfight, was not returned.
Sadiq, who was at one time close to Prime Minister Khan, made the revelation while responding to accusations by a member of the ruling Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) party that the former PML-N government had not properly handled national security issues, such as the case of former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was detained by Pakistani authorities in 2016 on charges of espionage.
“In the case of Abhinandan, I remember Shah Mahmood Qureshi was in that meeting which the prime minister refused to attend and the chief of army staff joined us – his [Qureshi’s] legs were shaking and
there was sweat on his brow,” Sadiq said, speaking in Urdu.
“And Shah Mahmood Qureshi told us, ‘For God’s sake let this man [Abhinandan] go back because at 9pm on that night, India will carry out an attack on Pakistan’,” he said, talking of a meeting of government officials with parliamentary leaders held sometime after Abhinandan was shot on February 27, 2019 amid an India-Pakistan standoff.
“But India wasn’t going to attack, nothing was going to happen. But they were going to kneel down and send back Abhinandan, and they did it,” Sadiq said, adding that the ruling PTI shouldn’t level such allegations as this would force the opposition to disclose “such things”.
The remarks sparked a strong political reaction in India, with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda highlighting the fear of an Indian retaliation weighing heavy on the Pakistan government, and blaming Congress president Rahul Gandhi for allegedly questioning the Indian military.
As Sadiq’s remarks were played up in India, he issued a video statement in which he claimed the Indian media “distorted my statement and played with the words in an attempt to change it”. He suggested he had meant that Prime Minister Khan’s “legs were shaking and he was perspiring as he couldn’t face the opposition”.
Tensions between India and Pakistan had spiked following a suicide attack by the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) at Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir on February 14, 2019 that killed 40 troops.
India retaliated by carrying out an air strike on a JeM base at Balakot in Pakistan, and this was followed by an aerial engagement along the Line of Control (LoC) that resulted in the shooting down of an Indian combat jet piloted by Abhinandan Varthaman. .