No one sitting in Pak will be allowed to kill Indian citizens with impunity: Tharoor
New York: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has said that post-Pahalgam attacks, there is now going to be a new norm that no one sitting in Pakistan is going to be allowed to believe that they can just walk across the border and kill Indian citizens with impunity, as he asserted that there will be a “price to pay.”
Tharoor is leading a delegation of Indian parliamentarians to Guyana, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, and the US, conveying India’s resolve against terrorism and emphasising Pakistan’s links to terrorism.
The multi-party delegations to different countries will underline that the recent conflict with Pakistan was triggered by the Pahalgam terror attack and not Operation Sindoor, as alleged by Islamabad.
The retaliatory Operation Sindoor launched by India targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
In an interaction hosted by the Consulate General of India in New York with a select group of prominent members of the Indian-American community and individuals from leading media and think tanks on Saturday, Tharoor said that India’s message to Pakistan has been clear: “We didn’t want to start anything”.
“We were just sending a message to terrorists. You started, we replied. If you stop, we stop. And they stopped. There was an 88-hour war. We look back on that with a great deal of frustration because it needn’t have happened at all. Lives have been lost. But at the same time, we look back on this experience with a steely and renewed sense of determination.
“There is now got to be a new norm. No one sitting in Pakistan is going to be allowed to believe that they can just walk across the border and kill our citizens with impunity. There will be a price to pay and that price has been going up systematically,” Tharoor said.
He said that India has focused on a very different narrative from some of its neighbours.
“Our focus for some years now has been on being the world’s fastest growing free markets democracy, attempting to focus on the development of our economy, our high emphasis on technology and technological growth and pulling large numbers of people from below the poverty line” not just into the 21st Century, but into the world and the opportunities the 21st-century offers.
Tharoor spoke in detail about the horrific April 22 Pahalgam attack in Jammu and Kashmir in which 26 civilians were killed, including one Nepalese citizen, for which The Resistance Front took responsibility and then retracted.
He highlighted the dastardly manner in which the tourists were singled out and targeted based on their religion, and the retaliatory measures taken by India through Operation Sindoor, which targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir through precision strikes. With Agency Inputs
