NEW DELHI: Former Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram has said that there is no evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the Pahalgam terrorist attack; the attackers were Indian nationals.Chidambaram, who is a member of the opposition Congress, questioned the Modi government “Why does the Indian government assume that the attackers came from Pakistan? Has the government identified them as Pakistanis?”
While criticizing Modi, the former UPA home minister stated that the attackers were, in fact, Indian nationals who had received terrorist training within India.The Indian news agency ANI quoted Chidambaram’s interview to a local website carried on Sunday as asking the BJP government “Where are the attackers? Why have you not apprehended them? Why have you not even identified them? Suddenly a news item emerges that we have arrested two or three people who gave them shelter. Now what happened to that?”
He opened a Pandora’s Box ahead of debate in parliament on Operation Sindoor by alleging that the BJP-led government was reluctant to share details on the Indian military response to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam.He said the government was “unwilling to disclose what the NIA has done all these weeks. Have they identified terrorists? Where they came from? I mean, for all we know, they could be home grown terrorists. Why do you assume they came from Pakistan? There’s no evidence of that. They are also hiding the losses.”
The BJP members severely criticized the senior Congress leader for giving what they called a “clean chit” to Pakistan regarding the Pahalgam incident.Earlier, Chidambaram had also criticized the Indian government’s stance on Gaza, saying that humanity is being disgraced there. “Dozens of people are being killed in Gaza daily, many of them women and children who have no connection to the conflict,” he stated.
On X (formerly Twitter), he wrote that according to the United Nations, more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed since May while trying to obtain food in Gaza.