NEW DELHI, Nov 8: Pakistan on Thursday accused India of faking an encounter in which the Delhi police shot dead two men in a busy shopping complex on Sunday and rejected New Delhi’s claim they were Pakistanis.

“I rejected the Indian contention that the two men were Pakistanis,” Pakistan’s acting high commissioner in Delhi Jaleel Abbas Jilani said. “I told them the entire evidence was faked by the police which itself is being accused by the Indian media of involvement in a fake encounter.”

Jilani told Dawn that the Indian foreign ministry officials showed him pictures of the two men and of the incident, which he rejected right away.

An Indian doctor has claimed he witnessed the incident at Delhi’s Ansal Plaza shopping complex where he said the two apparently drugged men were killed unarmed.

But late on Thursday night senior journalist Kuldip Nayyar said Dr Hari Kumar, the self-proclaimed witness, had called Nayyar’s wife to say his life was in danger.

“He called my wife in Delhi and said he could be eliminated,” Nayyar said. Junior home minister I.D. Swami dismissed the claim as “yet another lie.”

Delhi police have denied the doctor’s claim and said partial details of the incident had been handed over to the National Human Rights Commission, showing that the shootout was genuine.

The alleged shootout has divided political parties as well as the media, with one side demanding a thorough and independent probe and the other claiming national security was under threat with “irresponsible claims being reported.”