New Delhi: Pakistan may pull out from India four of its officers posted in its High Commission in New Delhi, days after a Pakistani national detained for espionage spilled the beans on ISI spies working out of the mission.
"This is under consideration. A final decision would be taken shortly," Dawn quoted a source at the Pakistan Foreign Office on Monday.
The move comes after CNN-News18 released the interrogation details of Mehmood Akhtar, the Pakistani High Commission official detained by Delhi Police for running a spy ring out of New Delhi. Akhtar, who has since been deported back, had blown the cover of four ISI officials – commercial counsellor Syed Furrukh Habib, first secretaries Khadim Hussain, Mudassir Cheema and Shahid Iqbal. All four could now be recalled.
Akhtar, now back in Pakistan, told Dawn that he had given the statement under duress.
"They took me to a police station after detaining me where I was forced to read out a written statement provided by them in which the names of the four officers were given and was told to state that they belonged to Pakistan's intelligence services," he told Dawn.
Akhtar claimed to Dawn that he was "manhandled" and picked from outside a zoo while on his way back from Nizamuddin shrine and taken to a Delhi police station, where he was "coerced" into recording a statement before being expelled from the country.
He told Dawn that Indian officials "tortured him to extract the statement and threatened to inject him with heart attack inducing injection" if he refused to comply.
Dawn said Pakistani officials believed that India did this on purpose to heighten the tensions. "We consider it as a serious breach of diplomatic norms. The Indian move has complicated the already tense situation and threatened the lives of our diplomatic staff," a Pakistani officer said, adding it was a "deliberate and provocative action".
Talking about the difficulties being faced by high commission staff, the officer said a son of one of the officers had to be taken back from school after he was ridiculed by his class fellows following this disclosure.
One of the family members of the staff earlier talking over the phone to Dawn criticised the Pakistan government for "not proactively and forcefully" responding to the threats to their safety. "It is a matter of life and death for us, but the government's response has been too meek," the family member said.
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