In the aftermath of the tragic Pahalgam terror attack on April 22 that killed 26 tourists and injured many, Pakistan's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar publicly challenged India to present evidence proving Pakistan-backed The Resistance Front (TRF) carried out the assault. He branded the perpetrators as “freedom fighters”, distancing his country from allegations of state-sponsored terrorism. 

TRF, believed to be a proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), initially claimed responsibility for the attack but later retracted its statement amid international backlash. Indian agencies and global observers have since linked the group to Islamabad’s covert terrorism strategy.

Moreover, Dar revealed that Pakistan used its non-permanent UN Security Council seat to remove TRF’s name from an official statement condemning the Pahalgam massacre, citing insufficient evidence to single out any group or region. 

India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, present during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Tianjin, bluntly condemned the act as part of a planned strategy to destabilize Kashmir’s tourism economy and stoke communal tensions. 

India has welcomed the U.S. designation of TRF as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, seeing it as a diplomatic validation of Indian intelligence and global counter-terror cooperation.