Three pieces of evidence linking Pak to Pahalgam attack, Tharoor tells columnist-son in US
His son Ishaan, a foreign affairs columnist with the Washington Post, had asked his dad whether any country had asked for evidence of Pak’s involvement in the Pahalgam terror attack
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who is in the United States as the head of an all-party delegation that is visiting several countries, was asked a question on Thursday (June 5) about evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the Pahalgam attack by his son Ishaan, a foreign affairs columnist with the Washington Post.
During a press conference at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, Ishaan Tharoor asked his father whether any country had asked the delegation led by him for evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the April 22 Pahalgam terrorist attack that took 26 lives.
‘This shouldn’t be allowed’
The elder Tharoor, on being asked the question by his son, first quipped with a big smile, “That shouldn’t be allowed. This is my son.”
The Congress MP assured the journalists that he hadn’t planted the question, and said “this guy does this to his dad”.
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He then told Ishaan that he was very glad he had raised the question.
“Very simply, no one had any doubt and we were not asked for evidence. But the media have asked in two or three places. Let me say very clearly that India would not have done this without convincing evidence,” said Shashi Tharoor.
‘First reason’
Tharoor said there were three particular reasons he wanted to draw their attention to.
“The first is that we’ve had a 37-year pattern of repeated terror attacks from Pakistan, accompanied by repeated denials. I mean, Americans haven’t forgotten that Pakistan didn’t know, allegedly, where Osama bin Laden was until he was found in a Pakistani safe house right next to an army camp in a cantonment city. That’s Pakistan,” he said.
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The MP also referred to the Mumbai terror attacks when Pakistan denied having anything to do with it. He said one of the terrorists was captured alive, and under interrogation, he revealed everything – his name, his address in Pakistan, where he was trained, what was done. Tharoor spoke about the recording of the Pakistani handler giving regular instructions to the killers in Mumbai that had been captured by both Indian and US intelligence.
“We know what Pakistan’s all about. They will dispatch terrorists. They will deny they did so until they’re actually caught red-handed. That’s the first,” he said.
‘Second reason’
Shashi Tharoor brought to their attention the fact that The Resistance Front (TRF), a “well-known proxy front of the Lashkar-e-Taiba”, claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack within 45 minutes or so after the incident.
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“The Resistance Front is a banned organisation listed by the United Nations and the US State Department, which enjoys safe haven in the town of Muridke in Pakistan. The world hadn’t even learned about the attack when they claimed credit, so that was itself a smoking gun. They repeated that claim 24 hours later, and then their handlers must have woken up to the gravity of this and told them to take it off their site, so they did, but the fact is the credit claim was on record and the world has seen it,” he said.
‘Third reason’
The third reason Tharoor gave to link Pakistan to the attack is the photographs that emerged on social media of Pakistani generals and police officers in uniform attending the funerals of members of terrorist organisations like Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba who had been killed by Indian strikes on terrorist camps on May 7.
“So we’re looking at three concrete pieces of evidence as far as India is concerned,” concluded Shashi Tharoor.