Wrap-up: Pak ups the ante

Mehmood Akhtar, the Pakistan High Commission official who was caught for espionage, was trying to gather classified information on deployment of Indian security forces along the western coast, possibly to carry out a strike similar to the 2008 Mumbai terror attack.

Akhtar was trying to gather information pertaining to deployment of security forces along the western coast, Sir Creek and Kutch areas and also about military installations in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa, a home ministry official said.

Later on Saturday, personal assistant of a Samajwadi Party’s Rajya Sabha MP has been detained by Delhi Police in connection with the espionage racket in which the Pakistan High Commission staffer was expelled from the country and three persons were arrested.

Also, the barbaric incident at the Line of Control in Kashmir in which the body of an Indian army jawan was mutilated after being killed by terrorists, aided by the cover fire by Pakistani Army, sparked an outrage on Saturday even as a pall of gloom descended on his native village in Haryana.

Commenting on the atrocity, Union minister Jitendra Singh condemned the mutilation of the soldier’s body as “atrocious” .

Mayhem at the border:

As military confrontation increased on the border, two civilians were killed in Jammu region of India in cross-border shelling and firing overnight even as the BSF on Friday claimed to have killed 15 Pakistani soldiers over the last one week.

Also, an Army jawan and a militant were killed on late Friday evening in a fire fight in Jammu and Kashmir’s frontier district of Kupwara.

A defence spokesman said that the clash took place in Macchil sector along the Line of Control. The infiltrating militants shot dead the soldier and then disfigured his corpse before fleeing back into Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, he added.

DC Take: Union home minister Rajnath Singh had once aptly described Pakistan as a country which is not ready to mend its ways. Involvement of its spies and the increase in ceasefire violations stem from its frustration. It also means that India has successfully isolated Pakistan at several global fora and that the arch rival is now trying to resort to its usual tactics to disturb harmony and peace.