India calls Pakistan 'epicentre of terrorism' over allegation of 'extra-judicial killings'

New Delhi: India on Thursday dismissed as "false and malicious" propaganda Pakistan's allegations linking Indian agents to the assassination of two Pakistani terrorists in Sialkot and Rawalkot last year.

"It is Pakistan's latest attempt at peddling false and malicious anti-India propaganda," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.

He said Pakistan will "reap what it sows", adding "to blame others for its own misdeeds can neither be a justification nor a solution."

The comments came hours after Pakistan claimed that it had "credible evidence" of links between what it called as "Indian agents" to the assassination of two Pakistani terrorists associated with the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India was carrying out "extra-territorial and extra-judicial killings" inside Pakistan, Foreign Secretary Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi alleged at a press conference in Islamabad.

"As the world knows, Pakistan has long been the epicentre of terrorism, organised crime, and illegal transnational activities," Jaiswal said.

"India and many other countries have publicly warned Pakistan cautioning that it would be consumed by its own culture of terror and violence," he said.

"Pakistan will reap what it sows. To blame others for its own misdeeds can neither be a justification nor a solution," Jaiswal added.

Shahid Latif, a key aide of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar and the mastermind of the 2016 attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, was gunned down in a mosque in Sialkot in Punjab province on October 11 last year.

Riyaz Ahmad alias Abu Qasim, a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative and one of the main conspirators behind the Dhangri terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir in January last year, was shot dead in Rawalakot in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir on September 8, 2023.

"Indian agents used technology and safe havens on foreign soil to commit assassinations in Pakistan. They recruited, financed, and supported criminals, terrorists, and unsuspecting civilians to play defined roles in these assassinations," Qazi alleged.