India rips Pakistan's 'preposterous' allegation dishonouring victims' memory
United Nations, Sep 30 : India has denounced Pakistan's "preposterous" attempt to exploit and dishonour the memory of the innocent victims of the 2014 Peshawar school massacre by making false allegations against New Delhi.
"The despicable insinuation made by the Foreign Minister of Pakistan (Shah Mahmood Qureshi) dishonors the memory of the innocent lives lost to terrorists that day," Eenam Gambhir, an Indian diplomat, told the General Assembly on Saturday denouncing Qureshi's claim that India was behind the attack that was carried out by the Pakistan Taliban.
"It is a desperate attempt to look away from the monster of terror that Pakistan itself has created in its quest to destabilise neighbours and covet their territory," she said while exercising the right of reply to his speech.
"Let me recollect for the new government of Pakistan the outpouring of sorrow and pain in India that followed the massacre of innocent children in 2014.
"Both houses of India's Parliament had expressed solidarity while paying respect to the memory of those killed (and) schools all over India had observed two minutes of silence in their memory," the counsellor in India's UN mission said.
Qureshi spoke at the General Assembly after India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had delivered a scathing attack on Islamabad for promoting terrorism in the region and warning the world of a conflagration if it did not act against the sponsors and protectors of terrorists.
He tried to portray Pakistan as a victim of terrorism and made the claim about the Peshawar incident.
He also dragged in Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian that Pakistan's military courts have in violation of accepted legal norms sentenced to death on spying charges.
New Delhi has said that he did not work with India's intelligence services and had been kidnapped and falsely accused. With a fact-check, Gambhir challenged Qureshi's claim that Pakistan was making headway against terrorists.
"Can Pakistan deny the fact that it is the host and patron of 132 of the UN designated terrorists and 22 terrorist entities sanctioned under the 1267 and 1988 UN Security Council sanctions regimes as of today?" she asked.
Those Council resolutions known by their numbers impose sanctions on Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and associated individuals, groups, undertakings and entities.
"Will Pakistan deny that the UN designated terrorist Hafez Saeed enjoys a free run inside Pakistan, spews venom and sets up candidates for electoral offices," she challenged Qureshi.
Saeed is the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) that killed 164 people, the 2006 Mumbai train bombings and the 2001 attack on Indian Parliament.
He is the co-founder of the LeT and the chief of Jama'at-ud-Da'wah (JuD) and an internationally designated terrorist with a US bounty or $10 million.
India had canceled the proposed talks between Qureshi and Swaraj in New York after three Indian security personnel were killed by terrorists.
Gambhir said that Qureshi "chose to term the gruesome killing of our security personnel by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists as flimsy ground" for calling off the talks.
"While it may not be the case for Pakistan, for India every loss of life counts," she said. "Hence our belief that talks and terror cannot go together."
Gambhir said that Pakistan's attempts to be a champion of human rights "is vintage verbal duplicity".
"It is evident from the recent example of Princeton economist Professor Atif Mian's apointment and removal from economic advisory council of Pakistan on grounds that he belongs to a minority," she said.
Gambhir also took issue with Qureshi citing the report on Kashmir presented by Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
It was "a report no member state had asked for and none supported and on which no action was taken", she said.
"Let me make it clear to the new government of Pakistan that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is and will remain an integral part of India," she declared.
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Baramati plane crash: Rohit Pawar alleges attempts to shield VSR Ventures
Mumbai (PTI): NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar on Wednesday alleged that someone was trying to save VSR Ventures in connection with the plane crash that killed Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, and claimed that the AAIB preliminary probe vindicated the doubts earlier raised by him.
He also accused VSR company of indulging in several grave lapses in the past.
The Learjet 45 aircraft, operated by VSR Ventures, crashed near the Baramati air strip in Pune district on January 28, killing Pawar and four others.
In its 22-page preliminary report on the VSR Venture's Learjet plane crash, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) said the visibility at the time of the crash was below the required level. It also flagged about fading marks on the runway and presence of loose gravels on the runway surface.
Pawar said, "I am not against VSR or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Ajitdada was travelling in a VSR aircraft. Unless we go into the depth of every aspect, we will not know the truth. But someone is trying to save this company. The doubts we had raised have been proven correct in the inquiry report."
He also claimed that the AAIB report contained discrepancies, including mentioning Baramati as a district, and questioned how seriously the probe had been conducted.
Pawar, who has been regularly holding press conferences to raise issues concerning the Baramati plane crash, also contested the report's conclusion that the aircraft hit trees before crashing.
"The report says the aircraft struck trees and then fell. But there are no trees at that spot. There is only a small bush which the aircraft did not even touch. What is stated in the report about hitting trees is incorrect," he said.
Pawar further alleged that VSR Ventures had displayed irresponsibility on multiple occasions, citing an incident involving the then chief minister Eknath Shinde's Davos visit on January 20, 2023.
He claimed that the aircraft carrying Shinde had entered Iranian and Iraqi airspace without overflight permission, following which fighter jets from the two countries allegedly warned of action, forcing a change in route from Bahrain to Zurich.
"There have been several such grave lapses by VSR," he said.
Pawar demanded to know from where VSR Ventures derived its "audacity", and sought details about its investors and officials, though he added that he was not personally concerned with who they were.
Drawing a comparison, he said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had taken over the probe into actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death within two days, whereas a month had passed since the Baramati crash without a similar action.
He claimed that VSR Ventures had two directors and three shareholders, and that there were eight common names across two related companies.
He further alleged that the owner of VSR was related to the Union Civil Aviation Minister and questioned why the company, though registered in Delhi, had made high-value investments in Jubilee Hills (upscale area in Hyderabad) at rates allegedly Rs 17 crore above the market price.
The MLA representing the Karjat-Jamkhed assembly constituency in Ahilyanagar district also raised concerns about the legal and institutional framework of the AAIB under the 2017 rules, claiming it was neither a statutory nor an autonomous body and remained answerable to the secretary and the minister, besides being attached to the DGCA.
"There is no independent investigative agency," he alleged.
