Foreign Secy Vikram Misri slams Pakistan: ‘Terrorists honoured with state funerals, coffins wrapped in Pak flag’

In a sharp rebuttal of Pakistan’s claims of civilians who were killed in Operation Sindoor, Vikram Misri, India’s foreign secretary, today said in the press briefing that it is odd that the coffins of purported civilians of Pakistan were draped in the Pakistani state flag and were accorded a state funeral. To back his claim, Misri showed an image of a funeral for those killed in Operation Sindoor, where members of the Pakistani army can be conspicuously seen alongside mourners. “I wonder what message this picture actually sends…this is a question worth asking,” he added.

Misri asserted that those present at the facilities which were targeted by India in the operation were terrorists. “Giving terrorists a state funeral must be a practice in Pakistan; it doesn’t make much sense to us,” he said, speaking at the second press briefing on Operation Sindoor. Misri made the point while responding to Pakistan’s calls for jointly investigating the attack in Pahalgam. “After the Mumbai attacks in 2008, where a Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist was captured alive, India provided extensive information and evidence related to the involvement of Pakistani terrorists,” he said.

Misri said that in the aftermath of the investigation, cases were registered, but “these cases have not progressed despite the formation of judicial teams. Pakistan has consistently stonewalled all the efforts to move the investigation along.” After the Pathankot attack, according to Misri, India gave “unprecedented access” to the Pakistani team to the site of the attack.

“Details of call records, DNA was shared with Pakistan. The address of the terrorists that we were able to discover was given to Pakistan, along with all other evidence against the office-bearers of Jaish-e-Mohammad and the handlers of the terrorists who facilitated them and guided them in, but there was no progress.”

Misri also averred that India did not have a positive experience with jointly investigating terrorist attacks with Pakistan. “It does not give the confidence to take, at face value, any Pakistani assertions of wishing to participate in a joint investigation. These are just delaying and stonewalling tactics,” he said, before adding that Pakistan uses the evidence provided by India to “cover its tracks and defend the terrorists whom we are looking for and obstruct the part of the investigation.”

The foreign secretary also addressed the disinformation campaign targeting the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 that has ensued in the aftermath of the operation. “There has been a fundamental change in the circumstances in which the treaty was concluded, and they call for a reassessment of the obligations under the treaty.”

He also told reporters that the Indian government had been in constant touch with its counterpart in Pakistan over the past two years. “We have sent several notices to them, requesting negotiations to re-examine the obligations under the treaty. India has now, for more than six decades, honoured the treaty, even during periods when relations were adversarial and Pakistan waged multiple wars against India,” he said.

Misri also said that it is Pakistan that has been repeatedly contravening the terms of the treaty, and according to Misri, creating “legal roadblocks in India exercising its legitimate right on the western rivers.” According to him, any projects that India sought to build along the western and eastern rivers, which it is allowed to, were “always challenged by Pakistan, thereby hampering our rights to use our legitimate waters under the treaty”.

He also pointed out that the preamble of the treaty states that the treaty was concluded in the spirit of goodwill and friendship. “It is India’s patience and perseverance that we have been upholding the treaty despite repeated provocations by Pakistan,” he said. “This is a treaty that was based on the engineering techniques in the 1950s and the 1960s. We are living through the first quarter of the 21st century, technological changes and advancements, in tandem with demographic and climate changes, and the imperative of clean energy, which needs to be taken into account.”

Misri also debunked any claims that India deliberately targeted the Neelum-Jhelum Hydroelectric Project in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in its operation, and has warned Pakistan that if the said claims are used as a pretext for “targeting any Indian infrastructure of a similar nature,” then Pakistan would be responsible “for the consequences that would undoubtedly follow.”