Shahid Afridi's insensitive criticism of Indian Army over Pahalgam attack has the internet up in arms

Hindustan Times

28-04-2025

April 22 will go down as a dark day in contemporary Indian history, with the Pahalgam terror attack claiming 26 lives, all but one of whom were Indian citizens. Pahalgam's Baisaran meadow in the Kashmir Valley, for now stands tainted with the blood of these innocent lives. In a multi-pronged diplomatic lockdown, India has suspended the Indus Water treaty with Pakistan, also revoking as many as 14 categories of visas for Pakistani nationals.
At a time when condolences and messages of grief-stricken strength are pouring in from all corners of the world, former Pakistani cricketer Shahid Afridi has an all-together new take on the situation at hand — word to the wise, it is incredibly distasteful.
During his appearance on Pakistani news channel Samaa TV, Shahid stated how even if a firecracker were to burst in India, fingers will always be pointed at Pakistan. Not just this, the former cricketer went so far as to lay the fault of the terror attack as a security lapse on the part of the 8-lakh strong Indian army present in Kashmir. He said, "Tum logon ki 8 lakh hi fauj hai Kashmir mein aur yeh ho gaya. Iska matlab nalayak ho, nikamme ho na tum log security de nahi sake logon ko (You have an 800,000-strong army in Kashmir and this still happened. It means you are inefficient and useless if you can't provide security to the people)".
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Shahid also made some off-handed remarks about the Indian media coverage of the horror, dubbing it Bollywood-esque in his own understanding. Not just this, he also took a vague dig at the cricket community in India for blaming Pakistan for the terror attack. It is worth mentioning here that the responsibility for the Pahalgam terror attack has been outright claimed by The Resistance Front (TRF), part of the banned Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group.
No points for guessing of course, that the comments section of this clip has turned into a virtual war of its own, with many calling out the cricketer for his baseless and tasteless take on the whole situation. Comments expressing the sentiment read: "Pakistan wale toh ye sabd bolne k layak nhi h ..desh na bikh jaye tumara kahi", "Sabut bhi denge jaldi hi pathaan saab", "Sahi baat hai bhai hamesha hum indian jhut bolte hai 🥲😂 khuch to SHARAM karlo", "Kuch chizo me saboot ki zarurat nahi hoti…" and "Hindustan Zindabad" to quote a few.
Part of Shahid's unprovoked rant was him expressing how opinions placing blame on Pakistan were actually uninformed. He said, "Main keh raha tha dekho inki soch, yeh apne aap ko padhe likhe log kehte hain (I was saying, look at their thinking, and they call themselves educated people)" — safe to say, the same applies to Shahid himself.