 "Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets US Vice President JD Vance. Image Courtesy: PMO")
Prime Minister Narendra Modi told US Vice President JD Vance that India would respond to any Pakistani action with more force, according to a source.
The development comes as the Donald Trump administration has sought to take credit for brokering the ceasefire reached between India and Pakistan. However, India has maintained that the ceasefire was reached after Pakistan reached out to India directly on Friday (May 10) with a request for a ceasefire.
Under Operation Sindoor, India hammered at least eight Pakistani airbases and other military installations. India also struck ground forces that were advancing in border areas. These strikes destroyed several Pakistani airfields, air defence sites, and radar sites, and killed dozens of ground forces personnel.
India’s response to Pakistan will be ‘more forceful, stronger’: Modi to Vance
A source told PTI that Modi told Vance on Thursday (May 9) that Indian response to any Pakistani actions will be “more forceful, stronger, devastating”.
It has been reported in the Western press that Vance reached out to Modi after receiving some ‘alarming’ intelligence and asked him to exercise restraint. However, the source said that Modi told him that Pakistani actions would attract a more forceful Indian response — as they did.
The source said that Modi listened to Vance’s concerns but told him that the Trump administration would need to understand that India would respond to Pakistani actions come what may.
“If the Pakistanis do anything, please be assured that they will get a response more forceful, stronger, more devastating than anything they do. They need to understand this,” the source quoted Modi as saying.
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As for the general message that India conveyed to key world leaders, the source said: “In all our messages after April 22, we said we will hit the terrorists, there will be consequences. We were very, very clear from day one. They fire, we fire. They stop, we stop. This was our message.”
‘India & Pakistan cannot be equated’
Even though foreign countries, such as the United States and Saudi Arabia, worked to ease tensions between India and Pakistan, India has maintained that it was the military hammering that brought Pakistan to the negotiating table. As reported by Firstpost , India maintained escalation dominance throughout and forced Pakistan to de-escalate and a ceasefire.
The source quoted above said that India told mediators that there would not be any equivalence between India, a country defending itself from terrorism, and Pakistan, a state-sponsor of terrorism.
“The clear message that we gave to our interlocutors is that we cannot equate the victim and the perpetrator. This even-handedness is not going to be tolerated anymore,” the source said.
The source further said that Operation Sindoor was India’s way of telling terrorist group that “no place is safe” and that India is capable of going deep into Pakistan-proper and hit them.