Prakash Javadekar demands apology from Congress over Pakistan minister's Pulwama attack comments

New Delhi, Oct 30: Union minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday slammed the Congress party, a day after Pakistan minister Fawad Chaudhry admitted his country's role in the Pulwama attack last year.

Taking to Twitter, Javadekar said, "Pakistan has admitted its hand behind Pulwama terror attack. Now, Congress and others who talked of conspiracy theories must apologise to the country."

Chaudhry made the remarks as he responded to comments by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lawmaker Ayaz Sadiq. Sadiq had said that foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi was shaken at the possibility of an Indian attack to free Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, who was shot down in a dogfight amid the standoff in February last year.

"The confidence with which he [Sadiq] said such things, that Shah Mahmood Qureshi's legs were shaking because India was about to attack. Hum ne Hindustan ko ghus ke mara hai (We went inside India and hit them)," Chaudhry said, speaking in Urdu. "And our success in Pulwama, that was the success of this nation under Imran Khan's leadership," he added.

It can be seen that this is the first time a Pakistan minister has admitted what India has long maintained -- that the country, directly and indirectly, encourages and supports terror groups that target India. As many as forty troopers of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were killed when a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a bus in Pulwama on February 14, 2019.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had attacked the Centre in February this year asking a series of questions in a veiled reference to the allegations that the BJP might have benefitted from the dastardly attacks. Senior Congress leader BK Hariprasad had also alleged there was a "match-fixing" between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan which allowed the Pulwama terror attack to occur.