NEW DELHI: India on Thursday categorically delinked any peace talks with the release of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who was captured by Pakistan after his MiG-21 Bison was downed in a dogfight over Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Sources also made it clear that if Pakistan or the international community was unable or unwilling to strike at terrorist camps in Pakistan, then India would do so.
“In the fog of conflict, facts are the first casualty,” said a senior source explaining the delay in the government’s reaction to Wednesday’s incident. “We took four hours to make a statement because we wanted to be absolutely sure that we had our facts right.”
It was only at 3.15 on Wednesday afternoon that New Delhi disclosed “which aircraft of ours was lost, we disclosed the pilot who supposed to be in Pakistan custody, before his details were circulated, and we mentioned the falling out of the sky of a Pakistani aircraft,” he added.
“Yet one hour later the Chief Executive of Pakistan goes on air and says two Indian jets were downed. So was the prime minister of Pakistan misinformed by his armed forces, or did he chose to deliberately distort the situation? Either scenario is deeply disquieting,” the source said.
Even though the Pakistani narrative has changed since Thursday, Islamabad is yet to acknowledge that their plane was downed and that their pilot had ejected. “This speaks to the credibility of the government of Pakistan,” said a source. “Later in the evening, the government of Pakistan informed a number of embassies in Islamabad that India was planning to launch missile strikes at undisclosed destinations, and that this was act of war. A number of foreign embassies approached us.
There was another report that Indian Navy ships were steaming towards Karachi. And that Indian forces are massing on the border.”
But “these sort of movements are easily visible to the permanent five members of the security council. And what was evident to them was our ships were moving in the other direction. So we didn’t really need to convince the P5 and other members of the UNSC that this was manufactured news.”
New Delhi then engaged with the international community, and reiterated that India struck camps in Pakistan in a counter terrorism or pre-emptive strike on February 26.
“We stressed the seriousness of our intent to deal with the problem of terrorism from a neighbour if Pakistan or the international community cannot. We have convinced the world that we have reasonable, strong and justifiable grounds to what we had to do on February 26, and that we will not tolerate any more attacks by terrorists. They will not go unanswered,” said the source.