India would not have conducted strikes without convincing evidence: Shashi Tharoor

Washington (PTI): Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, leading a multi-party delegation to the US, was on Thursday asked a question by his journalist son regarding whether government interlocutors sought evidence of Pakistan's culpability in the Pahalgam attack to which he replied India would not have conducted Operation Sindoor without convincing evidence.

"That shouldn't be allowed. This is my son," Tharoor said laughing, during an interaction at the Council on Foreign Relations when his son Ishaan Tharoor, global affairs columnist with the Washington Post, stood up to ask him a question.

"Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post. Definitely asking a question in a personal capacity. Mostly to say hi before you go off to your next engagement," Ishaan said.

"I'm curious though, on this tour you've been on various countries in the Western Hemisphere. Have any of your government interlocutors asked you to show evidence of Pakistan's culpability in the initial attack? And what do you say to the repeated Pakistani denials of having any hand in the initial attack?” Ishaan asked.

“I'm very glad you raised this, Ishaan. I didn't plant it. I promise you. This guy does this to his dad,” Tharoor replied amid laughter from the audience.

“Very simply, no one had any doubt, and we were not asked for evidence, but media have asked, and so you are speaking for your tribe, and that in two or three places, media asked this question,” the Congress leader said.

"Let me say very clearly that India would not have done this without convincing evidence,” Tharoor said.

"I can assure you, India is not the kind of country that would undertake a military operation without a very solid basis for doing so. This was not some random terror attack. I must say, our government counts 24 terrorist attacks in the course of last year emanating from Pakistan, but none of them required this kind of response," he said.

"We dealt with them. We either got the terrorists or killed them, minimal damage, a very little loss of life. We dealt with it. This showed all the hallmarks of a sophisticated, planned, deliberate operation with reconnaissance, with intelligence work, with a modus operandi worked out this cynical exercise of asking people their religion, shooting them between the eyes,” he added.

Tharoor said India has had a 37-year pattern of repeated terror attacks from Pakistan accompanied by repeated denials.

"Americans haven't forgotten that Pakistan allegedly didn't know where Osama bin Laden was until he was found in a Pakistani safe house right next to an army camp in a cantonment city," he said.

Recalling the Mumbai attacks, Tharoor said they denied having anything to do with it, but one of the terrorists was caught alive; his name, his identity, his address in Pakistan, everything was revealed, and he disclosed where he was trained.

"The US intelligence, as well as ours, recorded the voice of a Pakistani handler giving minute-by-minute instructions to the killers in Mumbai... So, we know what Pakistan is all about," he added.

"They will dispatch terrorists. They will deny they did so until they're caught with red hands,” he added.

He said that minutes after the Pahalgam attack happened, a group called the Resistance Front claimed credit. “Who are the Resistance Front? They're a well-known proxy front of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned terrorist organization," he added.