Pakistan’s statements on Kashmir ‘lies and deceit’, says India

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India on Thursday hit out at Pakistan for its unwarranted statements on Jammu and Kashmir and said they were nothing but “lies and deceit”. New Delhi said that Kashmir is an internal matter and Pakistan’s statements were “highly irresponsible”

“We strongly condemn the recent statements by Pakistani leadership on matters internal to India. These are very irresponsible statements,”said MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar.

Imran Khan and his ministers have been consistently targeting India after the government decided to nullify Article 370 ending the special status for Jammu and Kashmir. “The provocative statements from Pakistan include call for jihad and inciting violence in India,” MEA’s Raveesh Kumar said.

Responding to an alert by intelligence agencies that a group of armed men, possibly Pakistan-trained commandos, is feared to have entered Gujarat’s Kutch area, India said Pakistan must start behaving as a normal neighbour. “It is important for them (Pakistan) to now start behaving like a normal neighbour. What do normal neighbours do? You don’t push terrorists into a neighbouring country. You do normal talk, normal trade. This is not something which is happening from Pakistan,” Kumar said.

On Pakistan’s letter to the United Nations alleging human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, the external affairs ministry said “the letter is not even worth the paper on which it was written. Don’t want to give credence to it by reacting”.

New Delhi’s comments come amid rising tensions between the two neighbours and on a day Pakistan test-fired its surface to surface missile Ghaznavi.The timing of the missile launch is seen as part of an effort by Pakistan to internationalise the Kashmir issue at both military and diplomatic levels. It also raises the spectre of nuclear war between the two countries.

Pakistan has also been threatening to close its airspace to India. But there seems to be different voices within the Imran Khan regime over the issue. Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry tweeted on Tuesday that the government was considering complete closure of airspace to India but foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said no such decision has been taken yet.