Pakistan's Olympic champion, Arshad Nadeem, will not participate in the Neeraj Chopra Classic javelin throw event to be held at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru on May 24.

Announcing the event on Monday, Chopra said he had extended an invite to Nadeem, who won gold at the 2024 Paris Games. India's 2020 Olympics gold medallist, Chopra, finished second in Paris.

Nadeem confirmed his unavailability on Wednesday, a day after a terror attack in Kashmir's Pahalgam claimed 26 lives. Nadeem, however, said he was grateful to Chopra for the invite.

Nadeem is understood to have turned down the invite as it clashes with his training schedule for the Asian Athletics Championships to be held in Korea from May 27 to 31.

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The Pahalgam attack has worsened the situation on the border between India and Pakistan after it emerged that The Resistance Front (TRF), a shadow group of the banned Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group, was behind the heinous act.

In the aftermath of the attack, the government of India announced strict restrictions, including cancelling existing visas and imposing a travel ban for all Pakistanis under the SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme.

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