Any attempt at further escalation will be responded appropriately, India warns Pakistan

New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) India on Thursday warned Pakistan that any attempt at further escalation of the situation will be responded to in an appropriate manner. "Now if there is an attempt at further escalation by Pakistan, it will be responded to in an appropriate domain and therefore the choice is entirely that of Pakistan to make," Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said during a media briefing in New Delhi on Operation Sindoor. 

He also slammed the disinformation directed at India from across the border since the events that started with the barbaric terror attack in Pahalgam, mentioning that the "original escalation" has been from Pakistan on April 22 and the Indian Armed forces are only responding to it.

"The allegations to the targetting of the Neelum-Jhelum dam project in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir are absolutely fabricated and a blatant lie. India has only targetted terrorist infrastructure... If this kind of a claim is a pretext for targetting Indian infrastructure of similar nature, then Pakistan will be entirely responsible for the consequences that will undoubtedly follow," he said.

India also once again highlighted Pakistan's pressure to remove references to The Resistance Front (TRF) - the Pakistan-based terror group responsible for the heinous Pahalgam terror attack - in the April 25 United Nations Security Council (UNSC) press statement.

"This was after the fact that the TRF had claimed responsibility for this attack, not once but twice - within a few hours of the incident on April 22 and then again on the morning of April 23. It is perhaps only after the full gravity of the incident was realised by its masters and handlers across the border that it was managed to back off from this claim. Obviously, that retraction does not convince anybody," said Misri.

The Resistance Front, which has claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack, is a front for the UN-proscribed Pakistani terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba. It had earlier given inputs about the TRF in the half-yearly report to the Monitoring Team of the UN's 1267 Sanctions Committee in May and November 2024, bringing out its role as a cover for Pakistan-based terrorist groups.

Earlier too, in December 2023, India had informed the monitoring team about LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad operating through small terror groups such as the TRF.

Misri on Thursday also highlighted that Pakistan's reputation as the epicentre of global terrorism is rooted in a number of instances.

"I don't need to remind where Osama Bin Laden was found and who called him a martyr. Pakistan is also home to a large number of UN proscribed terrorists and also to terrorists proscribed by many countries. You must have seen in the last few days, their Defence Minister and former foreign minister accepted their country's involvement with such terror groups," said Misri.

Earlier in the day, the Indian Armed Forces targetted Air Defence Radars and systems at a number of locations in Pakistan.

"Indian response has been in the same domain with same intensity as Pakistan. It has been reliably learnt that an Air Defence system at Lahore has been neutralised," the Ministry of Defence stated.

Picture Courtesy: IANS