NEW DELHI: India on Thursday slammed Pakistan’s crackdown against Mumbai terror attacks mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed and his aides as “cosmetic steps”.
Islamabad’s sincerity will be judged on the basis of its taking “verifiable, credible and irreversible action” on terror and not “half-hearted measures”, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, a day after the Punjab Counter Terrorism Department in Pakistan registered 23 cases relating to terror financing and facilitation against Saeed.
India has seen such actions by Pakistan earlier too, Kumar said. “Let us not get fooled by these cosmetic steps. We have seen the course of such actions in the past. We have seen where it goes, where it is headed. Pakistan’s sincerity to take action against terrorists and terror groups will be judged on the basis of their ability to demonstrate verifiable, credible and irreversible action on terror and terrorist groups operating from their soil, and not on the basis of half-hearted measures that they undertake to hoodwink the international community,” he added.
He said what India is asking is “very simple. We want a normal relationship in an environment free from terror.”
The spokesperson’s comments come in the backdrop of Pakistan’s past actions of placing Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) under house arrest and then letting him go scot-free.
He was first placed under house arrest in September 2009, but was cleared of all charges a month later. In January 2017, Saeed was placed under house arrest, but was released in November the same year after the Lahore High Court concluded that there was “nothing tangible” in the evidence presented against him.
With agency inputs