New Delhi: Pakistan on Friday made the sensational claim that the attack on a Chinese consulate in Karachi in November last year was carried out with the assistance of Indian intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
The Indian government was quick to reject the allegation, calling it fabricated and a scurrilous attempt to levy accusations on India.
“Instead of maliciously pointing fingers at others for such terrorist incidents, Pakistan needs to look inwards and undertake credible action against support to terrorism and terror infrastructure in its territories,” the MEA said in a strongly-worded statement.
Karachi police chief Dr Amir Ahmed Shaikh claimed the involvement of R&AW at a press briefing and said that the attack was planned in Afghanistan.
“The attack was aimed at sabotaging the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and meant to create trouble between Pakistan and China. They wanted China to believe that Karachi is not [a] safe [city]," he said.
Three heavily armed men had tried to enter the Chinese consulate in Karachi’s ‘high security zone’ in November but were shot dead by the security guards. The gun-and-grenade assault also claimed the lives of two police officials and two visa applicants.
Shaikh said the detainees were linked to the Baloch Liberation Army, a Balochistan-based group which had claimed responsibility for the attack at the time.
India has opposed the CPEC as it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The ambitious USD 60 billion CPEC project connects China's northwestern Xinjiang region to Pakistan's Arabian Sea port of Gwadar.
India had strongly condemned the terror attack on the Chinese consulate and said such strikes only strengthen the resolve of the international community to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.
"There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism. The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously," the Ministry of External Affairs had said in a statement last November.
Shaikh said that police arrested five facilitators and claimed that a probe based on their interrogation and other evidence proved the involvement of India.
He said the terrorists spent four to five months in observing the consulate and its working. "They (terrorists) used to sit in the visa section of the consulate to observe when the gates open and other details," he said.
He said that the weapons were transported from Quetta to Karachi through train and were hidden in the engine of a boat. Shaikh said the mastermind of the attack, Aslam alias Acho, was reportedly killed in a suicide blast in Afghanistan. However, he said he was not ready to believe it until there was proof of Aslam's death.
He said it was an old tactic of militants to show a wanted rebel killed in order to divert the attention of security agencies.
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