More than a year after the Pulwama suicide bombing in February 2019 and India’s retaliatory air strikes on a target in Pakistan’s Balakot, ...
More than a year after the Pulwama suicide bombing in February 2019 and India’s retaliatory air strikes on a target in Pakistan’s Balakot, the incidents have suddenly surged back into public conversation.
Matters were kicked off by Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, an MP of the Opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), who on Wednesday claimed that Pakistan had actually released Indian fighter pilot Abhinandan – shot down during a dog fight with the Pakistan Air Force the day after the Balakot mission– under extreme duress because India was threatening war.
Sadiq was graphic in his descriptions: Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa was perspiring and his “legs were shaking”, the MP claimed in Pakistan’s federal assembly.
Pakistani claims
As the controversy raged over Sadiq’s stunning claim, a Pakistani politician fired off another incredible statement. “We hit them [India] in their home,” Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry told the National Assembly on Thursday. “Our success in Pulwama is a success of this nation under the leadership of Imran Khan”
Chaudhry later claimed that he was referring to a Pakistani airstrike inside India on February 27, 2019, and not the terror attack on the Indian paramilitary convoy in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir. But the damage had been done.
The Bharatiya Janata Party was quick to jump...
