 "‘No country can ever have foolproof 100% intelligence:’ Shashi Tharoor cites Oct 7 example to defend govt")
Shashi Tharoor, a top lawmaker from India’s Opposition Congress party, Sunday (April 27) appeared to defend the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi amidst allegations of intelligence failure regarding the deadly Kashmir terror attack. Tharoor said no country had foolproof intelligence, citing the deadly October 7 Hamas attack in which more than a thousand Israelis were killed.
Tharoor further said successful operations carried out by intelligence services never go public but we only get to know about situations when the agencies fail to thwart such attacks.
“No country can ever have a foolproof 100 per cent intelligence. We will never know about the various terror attacks that were successfully thwarted. We only get to know about the ones that we failed to thwart. This is normal in any nation. There were failures, I agree, but that should not be our main focus right now,” news agency ANI quoted Tharoor as saying.
Terrorists killed 26 civilians, mostly tourists, in the Baisaran meadow near Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam district on April 22, sparking outrage and heightening tensions between India and Pakistan.
Shashi Tharoor compared India’s situation after the terror attack to Israel’s situation after Hamas attacked a music festival on October 7, 2023.
“We have got the example of Israel, the world’s best intelligence services according to everybody, which were taken by surprise on October 7, just two years ago. It seems to me, just as Israel is waiting till the end of the war before they demand accountability, similarly, I think we too should see the present crisis through and then demand accountability from the government,” said the Congress leader.
Government hints at intelligence failure in Pahalgam
Earlier on Thursday (April 24), the government of India hinted at a ‘security lapse’ in view of the Kashmir attack.
At the all-party meet, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said there were lapses that the government has to find out.
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View All“If nothing had gone wrong, why would we be sitting here? There have been lapses somewhere that we have to find out,” Shah reportedly told the Opposition leaders during the meeting.
The government reportedly stated that local authorities failed to inform security agencies before opening the Baisaran area in Anantnag district. This area is usually kept off-limits until the Amarnath Yatra begins in June.
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