India fires a missile in error at Pakistan

JAIPUR, India — A nucleararmed state fired a cruise missile at another nuclear-armed state this past week. They were not at war, and it did not start one.

On Friday, India acknowledged that one of its missiles had mistakenly been fired into Pakistan two days earlier. Pakistan criticized India’s “callousness and ineptitude” in a “nuclear environment.” And that, so far, has been the end of the matter — a subdued aftermath that many saw as nothing short of a small miracle.

The two neighbors have fought several bloody conflicts, and the mere suspicion of covert support for militant attacks has brought them to the verge of war in the past. The mistrust runs so deep that pigeons crossing the border have been captured on suspicion of being used for espionage.

Analysts in India commended the Pakistani military, the country’s most powerful institution, for its reserved response to the missile firing, which apparently caused no casualties. That muted reaction seems to have headed off what could have become a disastrous escalation.

But the episode is bound to raise concerns about the safety of India’s weapons systems and about the government’s credibility on that subject. India waited 48 hours to confirm that the accident had happened, and Pakistani officials said they had received no information about it from their Indian counterparts in the meantime.

“The Pakistani side has shown great maturity,” said Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research. “We have been lucky this time. We should not make the mistake to think we will be lucky every time.”

Much of what is known about the missile launch has come from the Pakistani side.

Moeed Yusuf, Pakistan’s national security adviser, said a supersonic projectile had crossed the border at an altitude of 40,000 feet. Pakistani officials said it landed near the small city of the Mian Channu, about 75 miles from the border.

There were reports of damage to civilian property but, apparently, no loss of life.

On Friday, the Indian Defense Ministry said “a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile” that landed in Pakistan.

Singh said sheer luck seemed to have prevented disaster: the fact that the missile did not hit military infrastructure, an aircraft or a populated area; that it was not launched when tensions were higher than usual; and that it was not armed with a nuclear warhead.