Pakistan lodges protest with India over harassment to diplomats, families

Pakistan has conveyed its concerns to Indian government over the maltreatment meted out to the officials and families of Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi.

Sources said that Pakistan is considering asking families of its diplomats to return home after intermittent incidents of harasment and intimidation.

According to a press release issued by the Foreign Office says, ‘The staff of Pakistan High Commission and their families continue to face “intense harassment, intimidation and outright violence from the Indian state agencies”. The Foreign Office said that “these [incidents] have escalated exponentially in the last few days”.

In the latest of such incidents which have continued unabated, on Tuesday a car carrying school-going children of the counsellor was followed by unknown persons on cars and motorcycles. The children were harassed, intimidated and their vehicle was blocked.

“For psychological intimidation, videos and photographs of the children were constantly made for 40 minutes, leaving the children extremely traumatised. They were followed all the way to their residence.”

Additionally, the drivers of the High Commission were forcibly halted and their mobile phones aggressively switched off to prevent them from contacting anyone, the Foreign Office said in its statement.

“When a protest was lodged following this incident, instead of ameliorating the situation, it was followed by further harassment and stoppage of the provision of gas to the residential complex and further threatening of staff working at the High Commission,” read the statement.

In other incidents on March 9, the naval adviser’s car was aggressively chased and a political counsellor was forcibly evicted from a cab and harassed by unknown persons, who used abusive language, threatened him and filmed the whole incident with impunity.


Three days later, on March 12, some technicians were threatened and prevented from working at the diplomatic office. That evening, the first secretary was followed when he left his office for his residence.

“Despite repeated official protests lodged with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs at the highest level, there has been a rise in the occurrence of such disturbing events,” said FO official Dr Mohammad Faisal. He emphasised that under the Vienna Convention, the safety and the security of Pakistani diplomats and their families was the responsibility of the Indian government.

“The total apathy and failure of the Indian government to put a halt to these despicable incidents, sparing not even young children, indicates both a lack of capacity to protect foreign diplomats posted in India or a more reprehensible, complicit unwillingness to do so,” he maintained.