Early Times Report
JAMMU, June 18: The recent report that Pakistan's ISI has started sharing warnings on terrorist attacks in J&K has virtually turned out to be a mere hoax. The case in point is the reported warning of a bombing in south Kashmir's Awantipora last week - warning which was attributed to Pakistan's intelligence agency.
Reports from New Delhi suggest that there was only an anonymous call to this effect to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, not a government communication.
"There was no ISI warning," a senior official in RAW familiar with the case was quoted as saying. "There was just an anonymous phone call made to the High Commission, which offered no detail on the possible perpetrators of the purported attack or its timing," he reportedly said.
It needs to be underlined that the news that the Pakistan spy agency might have shared terrorism-related intelligence was read by some analysts "as a sign Pakistan is reaching out to New Delhi in an effort to defuse tensions, amidst a slew of measures which include the shutting down of jihadist offices in Pakistan-administered Kashmir's Muzaffarabad and the state takeover of key seminaries".
"Indian diplomats, the RAW official said, had passed on the warning to the intelligence services in New Delhi, who in turn routed it through the Ministry of Home Affairs to the police in Jammu and Kashmir. The MHA's communication does not state a source of origin," a report from New Delhi on June 18 said.
It is also important to note that the "information of the purported terrorist strike in Awantipora, was also conveyed through phone calls to several other diplomatic missions in Islamabad, including the United States".
"Frankly, this so-called warning doesn't mean a lot," a senior government official was quoted as saying. "The heads of the Inter-Services Intelligence and the Research and Analysis Wing have been in periodic contact, so if the Pakistanis wanted to pass on something, they'd just have picked up the phone," a report to this effect claimed. |
