Envoy handed Uri attack proof

For the second time in less than ten days, Foreign Secretary of India S. Jaishankar yesterday issued a demarche to Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit over the Uri attack and confronted him with proof of “cross-border origins” of the terror strike, in which 18 troops were killed.

The Foreign Secretary called in Basit and told him that the preliminary interrogation reveals that one of the slain Uri attackers was Hafiz Ahmed, son of Feroz and resident of Dharbang, Muzaffarabad in Pakistan.

He also gave details of the Pakistan-based handlers of the attackers, ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.

“Local villagers in the Uri sector apprehended two individuals from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir who have acted as guides for terrorists and helped them infiltrate across the LOC on September 21 and handed over to Indian security forces,” Swarup said.

They have been identified as Faizal Hussain Awan, 20, son of Gul Akbar, resident of Potha Jahangir, Muzaffarabad; and Yasin Khursheed, 19, son of Mohammad Khurshid, resident of Khiliana Kalan, Muzaffarabad, Basit was told.

During his interrogation, Awan has deposed to the NIA that they had “guided and facilitated” the border crossing of the group that perpetrated the September 18 Uri massacre, the Foreign Secretary told him.

‘Kashmir is ours’

In a sharp rebuttal to Pakistan, India said at the UN that it hoped the “message is loud and clear” that Kashmir is an integral part of India and will always remain so.

India’s First Secretary in the Indian Mission to the UN Eenam Gambhir on Monday evening again delivered a short and cutting reply to Pakistan’s UN envoy Maleeha Lodhi, who said in her right of reply that Jammu and Kashmir “never was and can never be an integral part of India”.