The Balochistan CM said the girl perhaps did not know that Islamabad was the target and was to be told at the last minute, commending the intelligence agencies for foiling a major plan
DNA
QUETTA: Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti said on Monday that a plot to coerce a girl into carrying out a terrorist attack in Islamabad had been thwarted by intelligence agencies.
The girl, who was reportedly arrested before she could carry out a suicide bombing, will be released to her father under supervision instead of facing trial, he said.
The chief minister, in a press conference alongside the suspect, emphatically denounced the perpetrators of exploitation against Baloch women and girls. He stressed that their actions had no connection at all to Baloch tradition or history.
“We are faithful to our tradition,” he said, adding, “These people have no connection to Balochiyat, and the way they are using our women in this war is shameful. I am so ashamed that I cannot even tell the media the details.”
According to details shared by Bugti, the girl’s name had initially appeared on social media as a missing person, but an investigation by intelligence agencies ascertained that she was allegedly training at a terrorist camp.
Terming the investigation’s results as “very unfortunate”, Bugti noted that the method of exploitation by the terrorists involved “honeytrapping” women, then blackmailing them. In this case, by threatening to kill the girl’s father if she did not comply with their orders, the chief minister added.
“The plan was to perform a suicide attack in Islamabad,” the chief minister said.
He contended that the objective of the attack, which he alleged was orchestrated by agents of India’s intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), was to sabotage the improved reputation Pakistan was currently enjoying on the international stage.
The Balochistan CM said the girl perhaps did not know that Islamabad was the target and was to be told at the last minute, commending the intelligence agencies for foiling a major plan.
In addition, he stressed that the girl had been exploited in an egregious way and slammed those who were responsible for it, asking, “They would exploit their own Baloch girls? Their own daughters, their own sisters … and to please international masters? Can you conceive of it?”
“Then they say, ‘We are Baloch and these are Baloch traditions and a Baloch cause’ — there is no cause, no Balochiyat. It is a curse on this Balochiyat.”
Bugti said the girl’s story had caused him great pain and was a cause for shame, asserting that it showed the difference between the state and the terrorists: “I always say we should be opening doors to Oxford and Harvard for these girls, and they want to exploit them and put them in suicide jackets.”
He also denounced that the terrorists would proceed to upload video clips of such women and girls to social media as propaganda, calling it “heroism”, to recruit more women for their plans. He challenged the notion presented by the terrorists that women were “a part of this war”.
