No place for double standards on terrorism: India's veiled swipe at Pak at SCO Summit

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, speaking at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ meeting in Qingdao on Thursday, delivered a strong message against terrorism, indirectly targeting Pakistan.

Without naming the country, Singh said that some nations use cross-border terrorism as an instrument of policy and provide shelter to terrorists, stressing that there should be no place for such double standards.

Pakistan, a member of the SCO, was represented at the meeting by its Defence Minister Khawaja Asif.

Singh added that the SCO should not hesitate to criticise such nations that support or enable terrorism.

“It is imperative that those who sponsor, nurture, and utilise terrorism for their narrow and selfish ends must bear the consequences,” Rajnath Singh stated.

He further underlined that peace and prosperity cannot co-exist with terrorism and the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), especially when these fall into the hands of non-state actors and terrorist groups.

Singh called for decisive, united action among SCO members to combat these threats, emphasising the need for collective security.

Speaking about the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22, the Defence Minister said that the terror group ‘The Resistance Front’ (TRF) carried out a dastardly and heinous attack on innocent tourists in Pahalgam, located in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. A total of 26 civilians, including a Nepali national, were killed in the incident. He stated that the victims were singled out and shot after being profiled based on their religious identity.

The Resistance Front, a proxy of the UN-designated terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed responsibility for the attack. He noted that the pattern of the Pahalgam attack closely resembles previous terror strikes carried out by LeT in India.

Exercising its right to defend against terrorism and to pre-empt and deter further cross-border attacks, India successfully launched Operation Sindoor on May 7 to dismantle terrorist infrastructure across the border.