NEW DELHI: In an unexpected turn, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor was left shocked when he received a question from his son on foreign soil during a briefing. As Tharoor sat poised, addressing a room filled with foreign policy experts, diplomats and journalists, a familiar voice rose from the crowd. He laughed and said, “that shouldn’t be allowed. This is my son.” His son, Ishaan Tharoor, global affairs columnist with the Washington Post, stood up and said, “Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post. Definitely asking a question in a personal capacity. Mostly to say hi before you go off to your next engagement.” He then asked his father whether government interlocutors sought evidence of Pakistan’s culpability in the Pahalgam attack, to which Tharoor said, India would not have conducted Operation Sindoor without convincing evidence. “I’m curious though, on this tour you’ve been to various countries in the Western Hemisphere. Have any of your government interlocutors asked you to show evidence of Pakistan’s culpability in the initial attack? And what do you say to the repeated Pakistani denials of having any hand in the initial attack?” Ishaan asked.“I’m very glad you raised this, Ishaan. I didn’t plant it. I promise you. This guy does this to his dad,” Tharoor replied to Ishaan’s question amid laughter. “Very simply, no one had any doubt, and we were not asked for evidence, but media have asked, and so you are speaking for your tribe, and that in two or three places, media asked this question,” Tharoor said. “Let me say very clearly that India would not have done this without convincing evidence,” he added. “I can assure you, India is not the kind of country that would undertake a military operation without a very solid basis for doing so. This was not some random terror attack. I must say, our government counted 24 terrorist attacks in the course of last year emanating from Pakistan, but none of them required this kind of response,” he said.“We dealt with them. We either got the terrorists or killed them, minimal damage, a very little loss of life. We dealt with it. This showed all the hallmarks of a sophisticated, planned, deliberate operation with reconnaissance, with intelligence work, with a modus operandi worked out this cynical exercise of asking people their religion, shooting them between the eyes,” the Congress leader added. He then stressed that India has a 37-year pattern of repeated terror attacks from Pakistan. “Americans haven’t forgotten that Pakistan allegedly didn’t know where Osama bin Laden was until he was found in a Pakistani safe house right next to an army camp in a cantonment city,” he said.Tharoor then recalled the Mumbai terror attacks and said that Pakistan denied any link with them. He then added that one of the terrorists was caught, whose name, identity and address in Pakistan were revealed. “The US intelligence, as well as ours, recorded the voice of a Pakistani handler giving minute-by-minute instructions to the killers in Mumbai. So, we know what Pakistan is all about,” he added.“They will dispatch terrorists. They will deny they did so until they’re caught with red hands,” he saidTalking about the Pahalgam terror attack, he said that minutes after the tragedy, the Resistance Front claimed credit. “Who are the Resistance Front? They’re a well-known proxy front of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned terrorist organisation,” he added.
