India Says Pakistan’s Spy Agency, Army Behind Kashmir Attack
(Bloomberg) -- India has made its strongest accusation yet that Pakistan was responsible for a major terrorist attack in Kashmir last week that killed 40 members of the security forces, a charge that may ratchet up tensions between the nuclear armed rivals.
On Tuesday, K.J.S. Dhillon of the Indian Army said a terrorist belonging to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed planned the Feb. 14 attack on a convoy of paramilitary troops. The man was a Pakistani national with links to the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, Pakistan’s main spy agency, and was gunned down in an encounter on Monday, Dhillon said. The Pakistani army facilitated his infiltration into India, he added.
Four Indian soldiers, including a major, were killed in the military operation on Monday, Dhillon said at a news conference in Jammu and Kashmir’s capital of Srinagar. Dhillon is commander of the Srinagar-based Indian Army’s 15 Corps.
“Pakistan’s Army and ISI were handling Kamran, the Jaish-e-Mohammed commander in Kashmir who had planned the Feb 14 attack on the CRPF convoy,” Dhillon told reporters. “Kamran is a Pakistan national."
Pakistan has denied any role.
Worst Incident
Relations between the neighboring South Asian nations nosedived after last week’s attack, in which a vehicle packed with explosives was driven into a bus carrying paramilitary troops.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country’s defense forces were given the freedom to respond even as New Delhi scrapped the most favored nation status it had awarded Pakistan and slapped 200 percent duties on shipments from the country. Islamabad recalled its high commissioner from New Delhi for consultations, following India’s move to do the same.
Last week’s incident was the worst attack in Kashmir for decades and by far the biggest terrorist strike since Modi was elected in 2014.
A 2016 attack on Indian security forces in Kashmir that killed 19 soldiers, and was also blamed on terrorists from Pakistan, led Modi’s government to launch retaliatory cross-border strikes.
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