Pahalgam payback: India exposes Pakistan’s lies, misuse of religious sites for training terrorists

Underlining that India’s military strikes at terrorist facilities in Pakistan were non-escalatory in nature, India has vehemently repudiated lies churned out by Pakistan’s disinformation machinery and exposed Islamabad’s sinister agenda of misusing religious sites to train terrorists. In a sharp and pointed briefing following Operation Sindoor, India’s top diplomat Vikram Mistri systematically rebutted “disinformation and fabrication spread from across the border,” and reiterated that contrary to Pakistan’s claims, only terrorists and terror facilities were targeted by strikes in early hours of May 7. “The attack of April 22 in Pahalgam is the original escalation, and the Indian Armed forces responded to that escalation yesterday,” he said.  He also reiterated that only terror infrastructure was hit in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and stressed that India’s precision strikes under Operation Sindoor were “non-escalatory, precise, and measured” in nature.

“Pakistan is using religious sites to indoctrinate and train terrorists,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Mistri told journalists on May 8. Debunking Pakistan’s claims that India deliberately targeted religious sites, Mr Mistri exposed Islamabad for providing “a communal colouring” to India’s military strikes, undertaken as a pre-emptive exercise to thwart future terror attacks.  “These nefarious designs will not be allowed to succeed,” said Mistri.

Exposing Pakistan for glorifying terrorists behind the Pahalgam carnage, he called out Islamabad for “providing state funerals to terrorists.”

In a nearly one-hour briefing, Mr Mistri, accompanied by Wing Commander Vyomika Singh and Col. Sophia Qureshi, repeatedly stressed that India’s strikes targeting terror facilities were measured, precise and non-escalatory Rejecting Pakistan’s calls for an impartial probe into April 22 terror carnage that killed 26 tourists, Mr Mistri rubbished such attempts as “stonewalling and delaying tactics.”

  Wing Commander Singh and Col. Qureshi provided a factual account of how India neutralised Pakistan’s attempts to target Indian military facilities at 26 sites in India. Sixteen innocent civilians were killed in Pakistan’s attacks, they said.  Pakistan’s attempts to escalate tension with India by targeting military installations in 15 cities in the northern and western parts of the country – including Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and Gujarat have been negated.   In a calibrated and measured operation avenging the massacre of Indian tourists in Kashmir a fortnight ago, Indian armed forces conducted precision strikes on terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan’s Punjab and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) on May 7. The headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Murdike, Lahore, and Jaish-e-Mohamed in Bahawalpur, Punjab, the two virulent radical anti-India terror outfits, were pulverised by missile strikes between 1.05-1.30 am on May 7. The strikes were executed flawlessly, with no collateral civilian casualties. The operation was emotively called ‘Operation Sindoor,’ as a mark of respect for two dozen women who were widowed after radical Pakistan-based terrorists killed their husbands on April 22, 2025 in Pahalgam, a popular scenic spot in Kashmir Valley.