New Delhi: The Congress on Tuesday attacked the Centre for not bringing Pakistan’s role in the Pathankot attack onto the international arena strongly enough and lashed out at former Pakistan president General (Retd.) Pervez Musharraf over his assertion that India was ‘overreacting’ to the terror strike on the Pathankot air base.
“I feel like we have not reacted enough…we should have reacted more seriously. What we should have done was bring Pakistan’s behaviour to the international community’s attention,” Congress leader P.C. Chacko told ANI.
Not sparing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government for keeping the opposition blind to the proceedings with Pakistan over Pathankot, Chacko said that the Centre was not making the situation transparent, which would affect the ongoing investigation.
“The biggest mistake by the Modi Government was not taking the opposition into consideration. They should have shared the information with us. They have not made things transparent which is why Pakistan has failed to act on the evidence and this is a failure on the part of the Indian government,” he said.
Talking about Musharraf’s statement which he made in an interview to a Pakistani news channel, Chacko said that India must not take the former president’s reaction ‘lightly’.
“It is not up to Musharraf or anyone from Pakistan to decide how India will react to the issue. India’s most important airbase was attacked by a group of terrorists. Fact remains that it was a major attack on one of India’s defence establishments and it was with the help of the Pakistan and we don’t need evidence of their involvement. In that kind of situation, India has every right to protest,” he said, adding that Musharraf’s reaction showed Pakistan’s attitude that they were not taking the Pathankot attack seriously.
Earlier, Musharraf called on India to not ‘overreact’ to the terror strike on the Pathankot IAF base, saying that both nations were victims of extremism.
“Terrorism is prevalent in both India and Pakistan. We are also victims of the same so we should not over react to what happened in Pathankot. Yes, of course we want to control such incidents, but one should get hyper over such incidents,” Musharraf said.
Meanwhile, reports have emerged that Pakistan has rejected the evidence provided by India in the Pathankot attack and has denied the credibility of the proofs. (ANI)