AT a time when all responsible states should be concentrating their energies on the battle against Covid-19, India is up to no good along the LoC, with deadly results. On Sunday, Hussain Mir, a four-year-old boy living in an Azad Kashmir village near the LoC, was killed by shrapnel from an Indian shell which exploded when he was standing in the courtyard of his house. Of course, this is not the first incident of its kind. In the last few days, several civilians in AJK have been wounded due to Indian shelling, some of them some critically. A senior Azad Kashmir official told this paper that since the start of the year, three people have been killed while 54 have been injured due to Indian aggression.

Such heartlessness and bellicosity is completely unacceptable. However, the fact it is happening at a time when the entire globe is busy trying to contain a deadly pandemic makes the Indian LoC violations even more egregious. Apart from the tragic loss of life, the Indian military is trying to provoke this country into responding to its irresponsible behaviour. Last week, the army shot down an Indian drone that had violated Pakistani airspace. Indeed, the Pakistan-India relationship is currently going through an intensely bitter phase. But the common foe both states face in the form of the coronavirus should convince India to desist from its provocative tactics, and encourage a spirit of cooperation for the sake of the people of South Asia. Covid-19 knows no borders, and a regional, in fact global, response is needed to vanquish the virus. If India continues to carry out such inadvisable violations of the LoC and similar cross-border hostilities, Pakistan will respond in kind. This will take away attention from one of the gravest health emergencies of the modern epoch. The Indian state should act responsibly and refrain from its adventures in order to save previous lives, and to prevent the pandemic from spreading further in one of the most populous regions of the world.

Published in Dawn, April 14th, 2020