In a turnaround on the intriguing incident of June 19 on the Line of Control in which four Pakistani soldiers were killed in a crossfire with militants, the Pakistan government has lodged an official protest with India alleging that its soldiers were actually killed by Indian troops.

In fact, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi raised this issue with the Indian side during his curtailed visit to India on June 27. It’s learnt that he termed the incident as “cross-border firing” and asked a perplexed Indian government to take adequate measures to prevent such incidents in the future.

Further, the Pakistan Director General of Military Operations in his regular telephone conversation with his Indian counterpart also raised this issue. The Pakistan military is even alleging that the bodies of its soldiers were not in proper condition when they were retrieved.

While the Indian side looks into the matter, South Block is quite stunned by this turnaround as Pakistan Military Spokesperson Maj Gen Athar Abbas had attributed the incident to “unknown miscreants”, a term Pakistan usually uses for militants, on the day of the incident.

The version that has by and large been accepted until now in India is that militants were trying to cross the LoC in the Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch area on June 19. They came under heavy fire from the Indian side and began to push back. It is believed that in the process they ran into a Pakistani patrol leading to a crossfire which resulted in killing of four Pakistani soldiers.

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