India said today it had mistakenly launched a rocket into Pakistan this week due to a “technical glitch” during routine maintenance, giving its own version of the incident, after warning its long-time enemy, Pakistan, that the incident would could have “unpleasant consequences”.
“On March 9, 2022, during a routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental launch of a missile,” the Indian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
“It became known that the rocket landed in an area of Pakistan. “While the incident is deeply saddening, it is also reassuring that there were no casualties due to the accident.”
The ministry said the government “took the incident seriously and ordered an investigation by the Supreme Court of Inquiry” into the incident.
Earlier in the day, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said it had summoned India’s envoy to Islamabad to protest an unprovoked breach of its airspace. Pakistan has called for an investigation into the incident, which it said could endanger passenger flights and civilian lives.
Pakistan has warned India “to take into account the unpleasant consequences of such negligence and to take effective measures to avoid a recurrence of such violations in the future”.
Military experts have previously warned of the risk of accidents or miscalculations from the two neighboring countries, which have fought three wars in the past and have been embroiled in numerous military clashes, most recently in 2019, in which the two air forces fought. Both nations have nuclear weapons.
“Given the incident … India and Pakistan should be in touch to mitigate the risk,” Agiesa Sindika, a South Asian military affairs expert, said on Twitter.
“Both countries still have the certainty that they have control of nuclear weapons, but what if such accidents happen again and with more serious consequences?” He asked.
A Pakistani military spokesman, General Babar Iftihar, told a news conference late last night that a “high-speed flying object” had crashed near the eastern city of Mian Channu, in the northern Indian city of Sira, in the state of New Delhi in Haryana.
“The flight path of this object endangered many national and international passenger flights in both the airspace of both India and Pakistan, as well as human lives and property on the ground,” he said.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry had earlier called on India to announce the outcome of its investigation into the incident.
A Pakistani Air Force official said the flying object flew at an altitude of 40,000 feet, at a speed of Mach 3, and flew for 124 kilometers in Pakistani airspace before crashing.
Hapimon Jacob, a professor of international studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said both sides handled the situation well.
“It gives me great hope that the two nuclear-armed states have responded to this incident with a missile strike in a mature manner,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that New Delhi should be offered to pay compensation for the damage caused.
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