Asif Mamood

If a chocolate bar is now accepted as proof of terrorism, then let’s not mince words: India is being run by a government of clowns, for an audience that claps at chocolate wrappers.

In a country with nuclear weapons, a billion people, and aspirations of becoming a superpower, the premier investigative agency—the mighty NIA—presented Pakistani chocolate as evidence of a cross-border attack. You read that right. Chocolate. Wrapped in foil. Found next to the corpses of three alleged “terrorists” supposedly gunned down in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack.

There were no fingerprints. No documents. No weapons . Jus Chocolate.

And the public was expected to believe it. No, not just believe it—cheer for it. Applaud it. Light lamps for it. Perhaps next time, India will accuse Pakistan of terrorism by pointing to a mango pickle jar left in a Delhi hostel.

But the absurdity doesn’t stop at chocolate.

Take the Pahalgam attack. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi raised the most basic of questions: How did attackers breach one of India’s most sensitive, militarized, and touristic zones? Why was there no intelligence? And if there was intelligence failure, why hasn’t a single resignation been offered?

The government’s answer? Deafening silence, punctuated only by a few jingoistic rants on primetime TV.

Meanwhile, inside the Lok Sabha, things are spiraling. TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee took a jab at Modi’s foreign policy timidity by asking, “Why are you so scared of Trump? Why can’t you admit Operation Sindoor failed?” A ceasefire that came faster than a Bollywood plot twist has left Indians wondering who actually calls the shots in Delhi—South Block or Washington DC?

And then came the Rafale embarrassment.

Congress MP Francis George dropped the hammer: “Pakistan has shot down at least three Rafales, an SU-30MKI, and a MiG-29. But instead of answering how many we lost, the Defence Minister wants us to ask what our ‘goal’ was. Sir, if the goal was to create expensive flying debris, congratulations.”

But the crown jewel of this tragicomedy was Amarinder Singh Raja’s revelation: a Rafale jet (BS001) crashed near Bathinda, killing one and injuring nine. The Modi government tried to hush it up as an “unidentified incident.” That might’ve worked in 1995. But in the era of smartphones and satellite imagery? The crash site went viral before the government could Google “damage control.”

So, let’s tally the scoreboard:

• Pahalgam: Botched security, no answers.
• Rafales: Falling like overripe mangoes, no accountability.
• Operation Mahadev: Zero results, unless you count dairy-based evidence.

And when pressed on inconsistencies—like why the names of the alleged attackers keep changing from “Zakir” to “Abu Hamza” to “Afghan” and “Jabbar”—Home Minister Amit Shah simply muttered something about “fresh inputs,” as though this were a cooking show and not a national security briefing.

Even the basic legal question—Why won’t India allow an independent investigation into the Pahalgam attack?—is met with the diplomatic equivalent of elevator music.

Let’s not forget, the very agency flaunting chocolate as “proof” of terrorism—the NIA—has already been declared unreliable by Canadian courts and publicly embarrassed in Indian courts.