Nitin Gadkari in Hyderabad on Monday.
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari lashed out at Pakistan on Monday, the third day of the ongoing encounter between security forces and terrorists at the Pathankot Air Force Base near the India-Pakistan border in Punjab.
Mr Gadkari warned that Pakistan would be given a "befitting reply" if it did not does not mend its ways. "We want friendship with them (Pakistan). That does not mean that we are weak. If Pakistan continues to do such acts then we will give them tit for tat (eent ka jawab patthar se denge)," he warned, in an obvious reference to the terror attack in Pathankot. He was speaking in Hyderabad.
In the most strongly worded attack yet on Pakistan by a senior member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet, since he made an unscheduled stop in Lahore on December 25 to meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, Mr Gadkari said, "They (Pakistan) know that they cannot win war against India. So they want to bring terrorists into our country and kill innocent people."
"Or they try to create differences between Hindus and Muslims. They are doing proxy war," the minister who is also a former president of the ruling BJP said.