After the missile dropped by India in Pakistan’s Punjab province, the Pakistan government was also planning retaliation. It has been learned from the report that Pakistan had prepared to respond to India with missiles. However, a day after the incident, when Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament that the missile’s fall into Pakistan was a technical fault, Pakistan canceled its program.
Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, said that Pakistan decided to back down from retaliation following Rajnath Singh’s statement, although preliminary assessment also indicated that the missile hit the town of Mian Channu in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The fall must have been something wrong as no damage was reported in the incident.
A Bloomberg report said that the Indian Air Force fired a BrahMos medium-range cruise missile from Ambala in Haryana, about 200 km from Delhi. The missile damaged some residential property but there were no casualties. Reports suggest that India did not use a direct hotline between top military commanders on both sides to inform Pakistan. Instead Air Force officials proceeded to shut down the missile system to avoid any further launch.
According to NDTV, military spokesman Major General Babar Iftikhar told reporters last weekend that our Air Force had informed in this matter that India tracked the flight path of the missile from Sirsa in Haryana to its landing place in Pakistan.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Tuesday, “If Pakistan’s Air Force did not take any action on India, if we did the same in response to that accident, the consequences could have been very dire. I have supported India and said that the fall of the missile was nothing but accidental.
Significantly, relations between India and Pakistan are at a historic low since 2019, when around 40 soldiers were martyred in a suicide attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama. However, in retaliation, India gave a befitting reply by airstrikes in Pakistan’s Balakot.