By IANS,
Islamabad/New Delhi : Pakistan has assured India that it will “look into” its assertion that elements in Pakistan used social media to whip up panic that led to the exodus of people from the northeastern states, but demanded that New Delhi first provide evidence for it.
“The Indian minister has said that rumours were generated from Pakistan through cellular services,” Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad while referring to his phone conversation with India’s Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde Sunday.
“I had requested him (Shinde) to provide evidence in this regard to us and we will take care of it,” Malik added.
In his telephonic conversation with Malik, Shinde had conveyed that elements based in Pakistan used social networking websites to circulate false pictures and stories so as to whip up communal sentiments in India.
Thousands of people from the northeast fled the southern Indian cities of Bangalore and Chennai after hate messages were spread through mobile phones and on Facebook in the past two days, threatening retaliation for the ethnic violence in the northeastern state of Assam last month.
Home Secretary R.K. Singh Saturday said the bulk of rumours of imminent attacks on northeastern people for the killings of Muslims in Assam originated in Pakistan.
In New Delhi, sources in the Pakistan high commission vehemently rejected the charges and contended that such remarks only widened the trust deficit between the two countries, specially ahead of talks between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in Islamabad next month.