islamabad (TIP) : The visit of India‘s foreign minister to Pakistan earlier this week was a “good beginning” that could lead to a thaw in relations between the two rivals, former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was quoted as saying by Indian media on Friday. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was in Pakistan on October 15 and 16 for a meeting of governments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, with the capital city under tight lockdown. “This is how talks move forward. Talks should not stop,” Sharif, the president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N), and the brother of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, told a group of visiting Indian journalists, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Jaishankar was among nearly a dozen leaders participating in the gathering in Islamabad, nearly a decade since an Indian foreign minister has visited amid frosty relations between the two nations.
Jaishankar and his counterpart Ishaq Dar had an “informal interaction”, an official in Pakistani foreign ministry said on Thursday, but New Delhi denied that any sort of meeting had taken place. (Reuters)
Pak police fire tear gas at protesting students
Rawalpindi (TIP): Pakistani police fired tear gas and charged at student protesters who ransacked a college building October 17, as anger spread over an alleged on-campus rape.
Tensions have been high on college campuses since reports about the alleged rape in the eastern city of Lahore went viral on social media, and protests have broken out in four cities so far.
The latest violence started when hundreds of students demonstrated outside a campus in the city of Rawalpindi in Punjab province. They burned furniture and blocked a key road in the city, disrupting traffic, before ransacking a college building. Police responded by swinging batons and firing tear gas to disperse them, police official Mohammad Afzal said. In a statement, police said they arrested 150 students on charges of disrupting the peace.
In Gujrat, also in Punjab, a security guard died in clashes between student protesters and police on Wednesday. The police have arrested someone in connection with the death.
They also arrested a man who is accused of spreading misinformation on social media about the alleged rape and inciting students to violence.
Earlier this week, more than two dozen college students were injured in clashes with police in Lahore after they rallied to demand justice for the victim, who they alleged was raped on campus at the Punjab Group of Colleges.
Authorities, including the province’s chief minister and the college administration, denied there was an assault, as did the young woman’s parents.
Sexual violence against women is common in Pakistan, but it is underreported because of the stigma attached to it in the conservative country. Protests about sexual violence against women are uncommon.
Hasna Cheema, from the rights group Aurat Foundation, said neither Pakistani police nor the media were trained to handle such sensitive matters.
“They turn things from bad to worse instead of solving them,” Cheema said.
The Sustainable Social Development Organization said last month that there were 7,010 rape cases reported in Pakistan in 2023, almost 95 per cent of them in Punjab. (AP)