Accusing officials of the Pakistan High Commission of indulging in acts of espionage and maintaining contacts with terrorist organisations, India today further downgraded its relations with Pakistan by asking the neighbouring country to reduce its staff strength in New Delhi by 50 per cent.

Charge d’ Affaires of Pakistan Syed Haider Shah was summoned to the Ministry of External Affairs and informed that India would reciprocally reduce its own presence in Islamabad to the same proportion. He was told that the decision was to be implemented in seven days.

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New Delhi told the Pakistani diplomat that it had repeatedly expressed concern about the activities of officials of the Pakistan High Commission. His attention was specifically drawn towards the activities of two Pakistani officials who were caught red-handed and expelled on 31 May.

While Pakistani officials indulged in actions that were not in conformity with their privileged status in the high commission, Islamabad has in parallel engaged in a sustained campaign to intimidate the officials of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad from carrying on their legitimate diplomatic functions, the Pakistani official was told by the foreign office.

”The recent abduction at gun-point of two Indian officials and their severe ill treatment underlines the extent to which Pakistan has gone in that direction. These officials who have returned to India on 22 June have provided graphic details of the barbaric treatment that they experienced at the hands of Pakistani agencies,” the MEA said in a press release issued this evening.

Islamabad was told that the behaviour of Pakistan and its officials was not in conformity with the Vienna Convention and bilateral agreements on the treatment of diplomatic and consular officials. On the contrary, it was an intrinsic element of a larger policy of supporting cross-border violence and terrorism.

Relations between India and Pakistan have plummeted to a new low in the wake of the abrogation of Article 370 by India in Jammu and Kashmir in August last year. Pakistan withdrew its High Commissioner from India as a mark of protest and also expelled the Indian envoy posted in Islamabad.