M A I N   N E W S

Pak expels Indian staffer

ISLAMABAD, Jan 18 (PTI) — Pakistan today expelled Indian High Commission staffer P. Moses, who was kidnapped and assaulted by Pakistani intelligence operatives last Sunday, and gave him a week’s time to leave the country.

The acting Indian High Commissioner Sudhir Vyas was summoned to the foreign office and handed over a note verbale asking that Mr Moses be withdrawn within a week “as he had confessed to heinous acts of terrorist activities in Pakistan which is completely incompatible with his official status.”

After the kidnapping, Mr Moses was planted with some explosives and currency notes which Pakistan claimed he was going to handover to a contact. He was also forced to sign some documents “confessing” his alleged crime.

India strongly condemned the assault on Mr Moses, who was released in the wee hours of yesterday, and rejected as “unfounded and baseless” Pakistan’s allegation that the official was carrying a remote-controlled explosive and Rs 5,000 when he was taken into custody.

“It is an obvious case of intimidation and kidnapping and outside the realm of civilised behaviour,” a foreign office spokesman said yesterday.

The spokesman said no attempt had been made by Islamabad to identify the so-called “contact” of Mr Moses and neither was the staffer questioned about who he was to contact or which officer of the Indian mission had, as alleged, handed over the packets to him.

On the allegation that Mr Moses was carrying a note written in Urdu, it was pointed out that he could neither speak nor write in that language.

Mr Moses had “confessed” that the bombs were given to him by “accomplices’’ in the High Commission.

The expulsion was ordered after the High Commission refused Pakistan Government’s request to disclose their identity and “to make them available for prosecution in accordance with local laws’’, a foreign ministry statement said