Pakistan says a 2019 air raid by India was a “false flag” operation conducted by India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for electoral gains and urged the world community to stop its long-time rival’s “reckless, militarist agenda”.
In a series of tweets on Monday, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said India’s “fascist” government led by his counterpart Narendra Modi “used the Balakot crisis for domestic electoral gains”, referring to the Indian raid on the northwestern Pakistani town on February 26, 2019.
In 2019, I spoke at UNGA on how India’s fascist Modi govt used the Balakot crisis for domestic electoral gains. Latest revelations from communication of an Indian journalist, known for his warmongering, reveal the unholy nexus between the Modi govt & Indian media
Khan’s tweets followed the publication of hundreds of pages of the transcript of WhatsApp chats between prominent right-wing Indian TV anchor Arnab Goswami and Partho Dasgupta, the incarcerated head of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) ratings company.
The chats, published as evidence submitted by the police in Mumbai city as part of an ongoing investigation into manipulation of television ratings, suggest that Goswami, Republic TV’s co-owner and host, knew in advance of New Delhi’s plan to attack Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
India’s “surgical strike”, which it claimed was targeting a training camp for Kashmiri rebels in Balakot, was conducted to avenge the killings of 40 Indian soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Pulwama area earlier that month.
