Former governor of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Satya Pal Malik, has blamed Narendra Modi government for the Pulwama incident in 2019 terming it the result of the incompetence of his government and a massive intelligence failure.
Satya Pal Malik was Governor of IIOJK when the Pulwama incident happened in February 2019. Over 40 Indian troops were killed when a vehicle laden with explosive hit one of the buses of a convoy of Indian Central Reserve Police Force in Pulwama on February 14, 2019. Political analysts and many Indian politicians had said that the Pulwama incident was orchestrated by Narendra Modi government to win elections.
Satya Pal Malik revealed in an interview that the ‘attack’ on the CRPF convoy was a result of “in-competence” and “laparvahi” by the Indian system and specifically the CRPF and the home ministry. At that time, Rajnath Singh was the home minister. Satya Pal said that the CRPF had asked for aircraft to transport its troops but was refused by the Indian home ministry. He also spoke of how sanitisation of the route was not done effectively.
More importantly, he said, all of these lapses were raised by him directly when Modi called him from outside Corbett Park shortly after the incident. He said the prime minister told him to keep quiet about this and not tell anyone. Separately, Satya Pal said that NSA Ajit Doval also told him to keep quiet and not talk about it. He said he immediately realised that the intention was to put the blame on Pakistan and derive electoral benefit for the government and the BJP.
The former IIOJK Governor also said, there was grave intelligence failure in the Pulwama incident because the “car carrying 300 kilograms of RDX explosives was travelling around the roads and vil-lages of Jammu and Kashmir for 10-15 days without being detected and without anyone knowing.”
Satya Pal’s interview with noted Indian journalist Karan Thapar drew sharp criticism from opposition parties in India.
The Congress party, on its official Twitter page, repeated the claims made by him, and accused Modi of “suppressing” the incident to “save” his personal image ahead of the 2019 general elections.—KMS
