ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Foreign Office said on Thursday that India has not only been found involved in promoting terrorist activities and terror financing in Pakistan but it has also been using its diplomatic mission for its nefarious designs.
In his weekly media briefing in Islamabad on Thursday, the Foreign Office Spokesman Nafees Zakaria said that a number of Indian diplomats and staff belonging to the Indian intelligence agencies RAW and IB have been found involved in coordinating terrorist and subversive activities in Pakistan under the garb of diplomatic assignments.
The spokesman said that those who were found involved in such activities in Pakistan under the garb of diplomatic assignments included RAW’s operative Rajesh Kumar Agnihotri as Commercial Counsellor, RAW’s Station Chief Anurag Singh as First Secretary Commercial, Amerdeep Singh Bhatti as Attache Visa, Dharmendra Sodhi as Staff Member, Vijay Kumar Verma as Staff and Madhavan Nanda Kumar as Staff.
Likewise, Indian IB’s operatives Balbir Singh as First Secretary Press & Information IB Station Chief and Jayabalan Senthil as Assistant Personnel Welfare Officer were found involved in subvervice activities in Pakistan, Zakaria said.
The spokesman said that Surjeet Singh who was declared persona non grata a few days back was also an IB operative working under Balbir Singh. He said that Surjeet was using a fake identity as Abdul Hafeez pretending to be a telecom company Warid’s employee.
“We are disappointed that India has not only been found involved in promoting terrorist activities and terror financing as was disclosed by Kulbhushan Yadav and further confirmed by the statements at the highest political level on 15 August and earlier during visit to Dhaka, but India has also been using its diplomatic mission for its nefarious designs,” the spokesman said.
Nafees Zakaria also apprised the media about the activities of these operatives of RAW and IB, saying they were involved in espionage, subversion and supporting of terrorist activities in Balochistan and Sindh especially Karachi, sabotaging China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and fueling instability in the two provinces.
The spokesman said that in the garb of commercial activities these operatives were also assigned the task to create unrest in Gilgit Baltistan, expand network of their operatives and agents, leverage their position as diplomats for ingress into influential circles for gathering inside information, damage Pakistan-Afghanistan relations with a variety of activities, infiltrate Indian agents into social, media and political circles to propaganda purposes and activities detrimental to Pakistan’s interests, fabricate evidences to portray Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, handle factions of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), instigate religious minorities, fuel sectarianism and malign Pakistan with propaganda on human rights issues, activities in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) detrimental to the Kashmir cause and misled International Community about indigenous movement for self-determination in Indian Occupied Kashmir.
Nafees Zakaria further said that India violated diplomatic norms and Vienna Convention when Pakistan’s diplomatic staff was arrested and tortured until the High Commission intervened.
Zakaria said that all along their security agencies, who keep surveillance on each one and everyone’s movement round the clock, knew that Mahmood Akhter was a High Commission’s official but they chose to violate Vienna convention.
They deliberately released the names of six other diplomats and diplomatic staff falsely accusing them, which endangered their and their families’ lives. They were unable to perform their diplomatic duties while their families were harassed, he said.
Consequently, we had to recall them for their safety. These highly regrettable acts were also part of their desperation to divert World’s attention from atrocities in Indian occupied Kashmir, he added.
