Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lt-Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa and Federal Information Minister Pervez Rashid addressed a joint press conference in Islamabad on Tuesday.
The DG ISPR kicked off the joint presser by playing a 6-minute video of a suspected ‘RAW officer,’ who had been detained last week by law enforcement agencies in Balochistan.
The video contained a confessional statement of the suspected Indian spy, Kul Bhushan Yadav, who is a serving Indian naval officer.
Earlier, there were reports that both will address a joint press conference. The announcement of the presser came a day after Pakistan Army launched a special paramilitary crackdown in Punjab, following an Easter Day bombing in the provincial capital of Lahore.
The army along with intelligence agencies and Rangers on Monday arrested a number of suspected terrorists and their facilitators while recovering a huge cache of arms and ammunition from different parts of Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan.
“Intelligence agencies with Army and Rangers carried out five operations in Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan since last night,” the head of military’s media wing had claimed in one of his Twitter messages.
The crackdown followed weak reaction from the federal government on the arrest of former Indian navy commander and Raw agent Kulbhoshan Yadav and has rung alarm bells for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leadership. The operation has also supported rumours that the relations between establishment and the government were getting tense.
The military leadership had already presented proof of the presence of terrorists and their supporters in Punjab when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had visited ISI headquarters in May last year. During the visit, the military leadership had presented evidence against many important people.
However, Punjab law minister and a close associate of Sharif brethren, Rana Sanaullah, had on January 30 dismissed the need for any military or Rangers operation in Punjab.
But Sunday’s blast proves that the operation which certain elements and the military leadership have been calling for was a need of the country and the nation.
In his address to the nation on Monday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to avenge every last drop of countrymen’s blood. “Those who are fomenting terrorism, sectarian hatred and extremism will not be allowed to flee and will face justice,” the premier said while addressing the nation in the aftermath of a terrorist attack.
At least 72 people were killed and more than 233 injured when a suicide bomb ripped through the parking space of a crowded park in Lahore where Christians were celebrating Easter Sunday.
Dozens of ambulances were seen racing to the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, situated near Allama Iqbal Town, with many women and children among the dead and wounded.
Following the deadly attack, a Pakistan Taliban splinter group had claimed responsibility for it. “We carried out the Lahore attack as Christians are our target,” Ehansullah Ehsan, spokesman for the hardline Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
