Pakistan has dismissed the Indian criticism of Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s comments referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “butcher of Gujarat” and asserted that no amount of verbosity could conceal the atrocities committed by the “Saffron terrorists” in the neighbouring nation.
The Foreign Office has rejected the statement of the Indian Foreign Ministry in response to Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s comments on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling it a reflection of India’s growing frustration.
Two days ago Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar had accused Pakistan of continuing terrorism and sheltering Osama bin Laden while speaking at the United Nations.
“I want to remind Jaishankar that Osama bin Laden is dead but the butcher of Gujarat is alive and he is the Prime Minister of India,” Bilawal Bhutto had said in a press conference in the US.
Activists of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) staged a protest outside the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi yesterday after Bilawal called Narendra Modi the “butcher of Gujarat”.
The Indian government also strongly criticized Bilawal’s remarks, according to Indian media report, the Indian Foreign Ministry had said that Pakistan did not have the justification to accuse India.
Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch today said, “The Indian government has tried to hide behind excuses and fabricated stories to hide the realities of the Gujarat massacre in 2002. “The fact remains that the masterminds of the Gujarat massacre have escaped justice and now hold important government positions in India,” the statement added.
The FO spokesperson said that no kind of rhetoric could cover up saffron terrorism in India and the ‘Hindutva’ ideology of the Indian ruling party has created an atmosphere of hatred, divisiveness and impunity.
According to the Foreign Office spokesperson, the culture of impunity has now become deeply embedded in Hindutva-driven politics in India. She added that 40 Pakistani citizens were martyred on Indian soil in the heinous attack on the Delhi-Lahore Samjhauta Express while the acquittal of the masterminds and perpetrators of this attack has shown the massacre of justice run by the RSS BJP.
“In all states of India religious minorities are threatened under state patronage, followers of Hindutva supremacy have been left to protect cows, vandalize places of worship and attack religious gatherings,” she said.
The foreign office said in the statement that a dossier containing irrefutable evidence of India’s involvement in the terrorist attack in Lahore in 2021 was also released this week.
She said that the statement of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs was a reflection of India’s growing frustration over the failure to defame and isolate Pakistan. She stated that India had used international platforms to defame Pakistan after failing to prevent Pakistan’s exclusion from the FATF grey list in October and recognizing Pakistan’s counter-terrorism efforts globally.
