New Delhi: Over a month after his arrest, the Pakistani government claims to have “concrete evidence” of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf spokesperson Raoof Hasan’s alleged “nexus” with India, citing his WhatsApp exchanges with Indian journalist Karan Thapar, who dismisses the accusations as absurd.
Describing the allegations by the Pakistani government as “bonkers”, Thapar told The Wire, “they’ve lost all grip on rationality”.
In a career spanning over four decades, Thapar – a well-known columnist and television anchor – has worked with leading channels in Britain and India such as BBC, CNN-IBN and India Today. Since 2017, he has hosted ‘The Interview’ on The Wire’s YouTube channel in which he has interviewed guests from India, Pakistan, Palestine, Israel, Iran, the US, Britain and elsewhere on a range of news topics.
Though it is common knowledge in Indian political circles that the ruling BJP is wary of Thapar because of his sharp and direct questioning and that government ministers have been told by the party leadership to avoid appearing on his show, the Pakistani government has chosen to portray him as a proxy for the ‘Indian establishment’ in order to bolster its claims that Hasan and the PTI are “running [an] anti-Pakistan campaign on [the] behest of anti-national forces”.
On Sunday, in what appears to be a well-coordinated campaign, a section of the Pakistani media was flooded with selected screenshots of WhatsApp conversations between Hasan and Thapar. These were then amplified on social media by the official handle of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (N) of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. The Express Tribune claimed that the WhatsApp conversations showed “foreign and Indian lobbies have been actively supporting the PTI founder Imran Khan’s ‘anti-state agenda’.”
The website of the Pakistan Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Sunday published an unsigned note/article with the title ‘Concrete evidence comes forth about nexus of Raoof Hasan with Indisa’ in which it claimed that “concrete evidence have come forth [sic] about [the] nexus of Raoof Hasan with India, which has exposed the facilitation of PTI founding chairman for fanning anti-state narrative”:
Later in the day, the Pakistani information minister Ataullah Tarar was quoted in the Express-Tribune as stating that “Hasan’s communication with an Indian journalist, known for anti-Pakistan sentiments, has further revealed PTI’s disloyalty to the country”.
After Hasan’s arrest on July 22, the Pakistani interior ministry claimed he was detained because PTI was “involved in anti-state propaganda.” PTI, led by former Prime Minister Imran Khan, had governed Pakistan for nearly four years before losing a no-confidence vote in parliament last year after falling out with the powerful military establishment.
Imran Khan has been in jail for over a year, during which many of his senior party officials have either been imprisoned or resigned from PTI.
Last week, the Pakistani military arrested retired General Faiz Hameed, the former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency and a close ally of Khan, on charges related to a property case.
According to the leaked WhatsApp screenshots, Raoof Hasan had first reached out to Karan Thapar on Nov 19, 2022 to discuss the possibility of an interview with former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
Another screenshot was of Thapar sending a YouTube link of his interview with Rana Banerji, former special secretary, R&AW, about the profile of Gen Asim Munir, who would soon be taking over as Pakistan’s army chief, .
“The following day, Thapar sent another interview concerning the army chief to Hasan, who responded by disparaging the Pakistani journalist involved and shared sensitive information about the army chief with Thapar,” wrote the Express Tribune.
The pro-establishment media reports also highlighted Hasan’s criticism of the Pakistani position on the Ukraine war in February 2023, comparing it negatively to the Indian position.
In another screenshot, a truncated discussion, apparently from March 2023, shows Hasan referring to the arrests made at Imran Khan’s residence. “Pakistan appears ready for a bloody revolution,” Hasan wrote.
The Express Tribune further noted that “reliable sources also confirm” Hasan had recorded an interview with Karan Thapar via Zoom on May 10, 2023. Why “reliable sources” were needed to “confirm” information that a simple Google search would have revealed is not clear, unless the idea was to confuse readers by presenting a publicly broadcast interview as some sort of clandestine exchange: The Wire’s YouTube channel uploaded Thapar’ back-to-back interviews with Hasan and Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir on May 10.
The same newspaper further claimed that Hasan sent a message to Thapar stating that Pakistan was “passing through an undeclared martial law era” and that “Complete military movement is being observed on Pakistan’s streets and alleys”.
The article went on to assert that the WhatsApp messages “indicate that Raoof Hasan urged Karan Thapar to promote negative narratives about Pakistan’s military.”
“Defence experts have expressed deep concern over Hasan’s reckless WhatsApp communications with Karan Thapar, viewing them as a treasure trove of information for the RAW operatives behind Thapar,” wrote Express Tribune. The website of the Pakistani ministry of information and broadcasting quoted information minister Attaullah Tarar as saying, “Raoof Hasan’s contacts with Indian journalist based on provocative and terrifying messages expose anti-national agenda of PTI.”
Asked whether these leaked messages were authentic, Thapar said, “I don’t keep my WhatsApp messages…. [but] I have no reason to doubt it if I’ve seen the WhatsApp messages correctly”.
He pointed out that he had only minimal interaction with Hasan. “I can’t claim he’s a friend of mine. We’ve only texted on WhatsApp. I don’t think other than the interview I did on Zoom, I’ve ever spoken to him… So, you know, to claim that we are friends or know each other or have a relationship is a vast exaggeration.”
The Indian journalist, known for his combative interviews, said, “They are claiming that I’m anti-Pakistani on a day when my column in the Hindustan Times clearly shows that the one thing I’m not is anti-Pakistani. And in India, I am considered to be pro-Pakistani and criticised for it”.
A critic of the Narendra Modi-led government’s policies, Thapar is perhaps best known among a younger generation of viewers for having so irked Modi with his line of questioning in 2007 that the BJP leader – who was chief minister of Gujarat at the time – abruptly ended the interview.
“I wish someone would inform our beloved Führer that I am anti-Pakistani and pro-him,” Thapar told The Wire. “Maybe then he’ll change his attitude towards me — and come back and finish his interview!”
Thapar clarified that he has used ‘beloved Führer’ as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Indian prime minister in his text messages over the past several years.
“Frankly, the Pakistanis have flipped,” he concluded.
Note: In an earlier version of this story, the year in which Narendra Modi abruptly ended his interview with Karan Thapar was wrongly mentioned as 2002. It was in 2007.
