Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Rajnath Singh on Saturday welcomed Pakistan’s admission about the presence of India’s most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim on its soil, and asked New Delhi to scale down its diplomatic relations with Islamabad till the neighbouring nation does not take a tough stand against terror outfits operating from its territory.
“Dawood Ibrahim has been residing in Pakistan for long and it’s good that they finally accepted this fact. But I think Pakistan should take strict actions against all those responsible for the terror attacks in India, in particular the 26/11 (Mumbai) terror attacks,” Singh told Asian News International (ANI) here.
“And, if Pakistan doesn’t take action against them and stop the terrorism emanating from its territory, then I think that India should scale down its diplomatic relations with Pakistan,” he added.
According to reports, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s special envoy for improving relations with India, Shahryar Khan, said yesterday that Dawood was in Pakistan but has been ‘chased out’ and could be in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“Dawood (Ibrahim) was in Pakistan, but I believe he was chased out of Pakistan. If he is in Pakistan, he should be hounded and arrested. We cannot allow such gangsters to operate from the country,” he said, while speaking to reporters at a pre-launch event for his book “Cricket Cauldron: The Turbulent Politics of Sport in Pakistan” in London.
The former diplomat added that if Dawood was still in Pakistan he would have been arrested by now.
However, he later told an Indian television channel that he had never known where Dawood lived and his earlier statement was just reflecting what the Pakistani media has been reporting in the past. (ANI)