‘Acted like ISIS’: Asaduddin Owaisi slams Pakistan over Pahalgam terror attack

AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday launched a scathing attack on Pakistan over the recent terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam that killed 26 people, saying that they “acted like ISIS” by killing the nation’s citizens in their land.

Addressing a public meeting in Maharashtra’s Parbhani, Owaisi further said that Pakistan cannot claim to be a nuclear power and then go around killing innocent people without consequences.

“Pakistan always talks about being a nuclear power; they need to remember that if they enter a country and kill innocent people, that country will not sit quietly. No matter the government, by killing our people on our land, and targeting them based on religion, what ‘deen’ are you talking about?… You have acted like ISIS,” Owaisi was quoted as saying by the news agency ANI.

In one of the deadliest terror incidents in the valley since the 2019 Pulwama attack, terrorists on April 22 gunned down 26 people, mostly tourists, in the picturesque Baisaran meadow near Pahalgam.

Meanwhile, the National Investigation Agency, whose teams have been present in the region since the day of the attack, formally took over the probe into the terror attack on Sunday.

The NIA, in its statement, said that eyewitnesses were being questioned in minute detail to help piece together the entire sequence of events that led to the deadly terror attacks in Pahalgam.

Meanwhile, tensions between India and Pakistan have been on the rise since New Delhi decided to take major actions against Islamabad. Following the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meeting on April 23, the central government suspended the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, closed the integrated check post at Attari border and revoked all visas issued to Pakistani nationals.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday said that Islamabad is ready for “neutral investigation” into the deadly terror attack in Pahalgam. However, he asserted that Pakistani forces remain fully capable of defending their country’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity.