Pakistan returns fire on Nirmala Sitharaman's threat to hit back
Khan was referring to former Indian Naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav.
New Delhi: Hours after defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman vowed to hit Pakistan for the Jammu terror attack, her Pakistani counterpart Khurram Dastgir Khan warned that his country will “pay India in its own coin in case of any Indian misadventure”. He also dismissed New Delhi’s claim that Islamabad was behind the storming of the Sunjwan Army camp in Jammu in which five Armymen and a civilian were killed.
Responding to Ms Sitharaman’s remark on Monday that India reserves the right to respond adequately at the time of its choosing, Mr Khan said, “Any Indian aggression, strategic miscalculation, or misadventure regardless of its scale, mode or location will not go unpunished and shall be met with an equal and proportionate response.”
“Instead of the knee-jerk reaction of blaming Pakistan without substantiation, India must answer for state-sponsored espionage against Pakistan,” Mr Khan said in a statement.
He was referring to former Indian Naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of terrorism.
Claiming that Pakistan’s armed forces are alive to all possibilities, the Pakistani minister said that “an aggressive Pak-centric doctrine and arrayed forces under a belligerent regime leading to possible strategic miscalculation by India will seriously impact the strategic stability in South Asia”.
Later, the Pakistan foreign office too stepped up the attack on India, saying, “The now familiar Indian tendency of apportioning blame to Pakistan, without a shred of evidence, is regrettable.”
Denying any role in the Jammu attack, the Pakistan foreign office said, “The Indian allegations are premature and inopportune, especially as India itself admits that the operation still continued and investigations had just started, when these comments were made. We have repeatedly seen India arrogating to itself the role of judge, jury and executioner.”
“The reflex assignment of blame and smear campaigns, based on unfounded allegations, carry no credibility. More deplorable is the threatening tone of the Indian comments that achieves nothing, but further vitiates the already tense environment marked by unprecedented ceasefire violations by India on the Line of Control (LoC),” it added.