Islamabad, May 2

Pakistan said on Thursday that it was waiting for an independent confirmation about an Indian claim regarding the arrest of over a dozen people with 86 kg of drugs from a Pakistani boat off the Gujarat coast.

The Indian Coast Guard said on Sunday that it seized 86 kg of drugs worth Rs 600 crore from a Pakistani boat and arrested 14 persons on board the vessel off the Gujarat coast. The operation in the Arabian Sea was carried out in coordination with the Gujarat Anti-terrorism Squad and the Narcotics Control Bureau.

"We have seen these media reports and we are awaiting independent confirmation of the claims made by the Indian authorities. We will make our comments known once we have details of this incident," Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said when asked about the development during her weekly media briefing here.

She alleged that India's "network of espionage"..., over the last several decades, has expanded to several continents and is now "an issue of concern" for the international community.

To a question that Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a rally that he wanted to tell Pakistan over telephone about the Balakot strikes in February 2019, she said, "there has been a rewriting of history from the Indian side".

"They have made statements which are not based on facts, and which are many times geared towards political mileage inside India. So, I would not like to comment on this particular statement by the Indian Prime Minister. However, I would like to highlight that as Pakistan demonstrated in 2019, the people of Pakistan and its armed forces are ready to defend the country against all intrusions from any quarters," she said.

When asked about reports that Pakistan was planning to give two air bases to the US, she said, "this speculation is completely unfounded and we reject it".