NEW DELHI, April 30. /TASS/. As many as 786 Pakistani nationals, including 55 diplomats, their family members and embassy support staff have left India after the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir in connection with New Delhi’s decision to revoke visas issued to Pakistani citizens, the PTI agency reported, citing an official source.
Also, 1,465 Indians, including 25 diplomats and officials, have crossed the border from Pakistan into India through the international border crossing in Punjab since April 24.
Three defense advisers at the Pakistani embassy in New Delhi were declared persona non grata on April 23 and given one week to leave India. Five members of the department of these defense attaches were also forced to leave the country. India also recalled its defense attache from the Indian embassy in Islamabad.
Earlier, Indian authorities had set April 26 as the deadline for those holding visas of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) to leave the country.
For medical visa holders, the deadline was April 29 and for 12 other categories of visas, it was April 27. These were visas issued on arrival for business, film industry, journalists, transit, conference participants, mountaineers, students, group tourists and pilgrims.
On April 22, armed men killed 25 Indians and one Nepalese national and wounded many more with machine gun fire in the popular tourist town of Pahalgam in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. According to media reports, Indian intelligence agencies allegedly found evidence that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was involved in the terrorist attack committed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba group (outlawed in Russia). After the attack, India almost halved its embassy staff in Pakistan, suspended an agreement with Islamabad on the allocation of water resources, declared the military advisors of the Pakistani diplomatic mission in India personae non gratae, and also suspended the issuance of visas to Pakistani citizens.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a high-level security meeting on Tuesday. According to sources, he stated that the Indian armed forces had "complete operational freedom to decide on the mode, targets and timing" of the country’s response to the Pahalgam attack. Pakistani Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar, in turn, said that India planned "to carry out military action" against Pakistan within the next 24 to 36 hours.