Former Pakistani PM Imran Khan made frantic attempts to communicate with PM Narendra Modi to prevent a military crisis, claims former High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria.
Following the Pulwama terror strikes in 2019, former Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan had made frantic attempts to communicate with Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the phone in an attempt to prevent a full-blown military crisis, a new book written by the former High Commissioner to Pakistan showed.
In the latest book, ‘Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan’, Ajay Bisaria former India High Commissioner claimed that Pakistan had credible information on nine missiles that India had prepared to launch into Pakistani territory.
As per the book, while anticipating an Indian missile attack, fear-stricken Imran Khan pulled out all the stops and requested a midnight call with PM Modi to bring the situation under control. The call was arranged by the then-Pakistani High Commissioner, Sohail Mehmood, who contacted his counterpart in Delhi.
“At around midnight, I got a call in Delhi from Pakistani high commissioner Sohail Mahmood, now in Islamabad, who said that PM Imran Khan was keen to talk to Prime Minister Modi. I checked upstairs and responded that our Prime Minister was not available at this hour but in case Imran Khan had any urgent message to convey, he could, of course, convey it to me. I got no call back that night,” Basaria mentioned in his book.
The events unfolded a day after the Balakot airstrikes conducted by the Indian Air Force on terror hideouts in Pakistan on February 26, 2019. These strikes were in retaliation for a terrorist attack on Indian forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama on February 14, 2019.
In the book, Bisaria also wrote, “India was asked to desist, since this was an unprecedented act of aggression and an action tantamount to open war. While Pakistan’s media reported the demarche on ceasefire violations by India, the story of the potential missile launch was held back that night but released in a background briefing by ISPR on March 4, with some embellishments. Several media reports appeared in March, detailing the conversations around the missiles between India and Pakistan and through global interlocutors.”
Following the Balakot strike, Bisaria said, “the next day, we got the breaking news that Khan had said that Pakistan would repatriate Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, the IAF pilot who had been captured after his plane went down in Pakistani territory, as a “peace gesture”. Bisaria termed the release of the Indian Pilot a result of India’s “coercive diplomacy.”
“India’s coercive diplomacy had been effective, India’s expectations of Pakistan and of the world had been clear, backed by a credible resolve to escalate the crisis,” says the book.
Prime Minister Modi had later said in a campaign speech ‘Fortunately, Pakistan announced that the pilot would be sent back to India. Else, it would have been ‘Qatal ki Raat’, a night of bloodshed, the former Diplomat has written in his book.
On this, Ajay Bisaria said, “PM Modi did mention this in his speech. He did refer to this episode but Imran Khan also referred to this episode in his own speech in Parliament, that he had made an attempt to talk to the Indian PM. There was a conversation in Pakistan’s parliament also, which has been reported by a Pakistan MP. He mentioned that both, then Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and then Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa came to brief the MPs and said there is a serious danger of the crisis escalating and India taking hard action and therefore, we should return the pilot…”
(With inputs from ANI)
