Pakistan reacts to India’s accusations

This comes after 11 people were killed in the Gurdaspur terror attack which included 5 policemen and 3 civilians on Monday.

Singh said the Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, which belonged to the terrorists and were recovered after they were shot dead, established that they crossed into India through the River Ravi. “That is part of a diplomatic strategy”, said Jaitley.

Spokesman M. Khalilullah said terrorism was a common enemy for both Pakistan and India and required a cooperative approach rather than a blame game.

“I take this opportunity to assure the house that the government is firmly committed to rooting out terrorism from India“.

India regularly accuses Pakistan’s army of providing covering fire for rebels who infiltrate across the border and then mount attacks in Indian Kashmir.

Foreign office spokesman Qazi Khaliullah described the statement as “unsubstantiated and unwarranted assertion” and said “pointing fingers” before investigations were completed “was not a healthy trend”.

He pointed out that in the Gurdaspur incident blames were apportioned to Pakistan by the Indian media, even when the encounter with terrorists was still going on.

The union home minister said the Border Security Force was always on the alert though some terrorist might have succeeded in infiltrating due to heavy rains and swelling of rivers and nullahs on the border.

According to one of the persons cited above, the strategy seems to be to engage Pakistan on terrorism while responding firmly to terrorist violence. Doval is preparing to raise India’s concerns over trial of 26/11 suspect Zaki Urrehman Lakhvi whereas Pakistan is also readying a dossier regarding Samjhota Express attack, the report concluded.

Gurdaspur: Postmortem examinations were on Friday being conducted at the civil hospital in Gurdaspur on the bodies of the three terrorists, who had stormed a police station in Gurdaspur and were gunned down by Punjab Police personnel during a day-long operation. Seven people including including Superintendent of Police (Detective) Baljeet Singh were killed in the attack.