Dubai: After Suryakumar Yadav, captain of India’s T20I side, announced that he will donate his tournament match fees to the Indian armed forces and families of the Pahalgam terror attack victims, his Pakistani counterpart Salman Ali Agha went a step ahead and said his whole team would donate its match fees to the “civilians and children” affected during Operation Sindoor.
This statement by Agha has raised questions on whether this money will go to terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) as India only targeted terror facilities during Operation Sindoor and care was taken not to cause any harm to Pakistani civilians.
Operation Sindoor was the military strikes carried out by India against nine terror installations in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir in retaliation to the Pahalgam terror attack, in which 26 people were killed. India has repeatedly said that no civilian targets were hit by its missiles. Those killed included terrorists and their families, many of whom were facilitators.
Immediately after India struck the terror camps, Pakistan Army officers and politicians were seen participating in the last rites of those killed. Terrorists were given state funerals and the Pakistani government also announced a compensation package.
“As a team, we have decided to donate our match fees to the civilians and children affected by India’s attack,” Agha said at the post-match press conference.
Suryakumar had earlier said: “I have decided to donate my match fees from this tournament to support our armed forces and the families of the victims who suffered from the Pahalgam terror attack. You always remain in my thoughts.”
India won the Asia cup on Sunday after trouncing Pakistan. The event concluded on a rather bitter note as India refused to accept the trophy from Pakistani interior minister Mohsin Naqvi, who later left the venue for his hotel with it and India’s medals.
The presentation ceremony started after a delay of over one hour.
Simon Doull, the presenter for the host broadcaster towards the end of the ceremony, confirmed that, “I have been informed by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) that the Indian cricket team will not be collecting their awards tonight. So that does conclude the post-match presentation.”
While India’s Kuldeep Yadav, Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Varma received their individual awards from the sponsors of the tournament, Agha accepted the runners-up cheque from Naqvi, who is also the president of the Pakistan Cricket Board and chairman of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC). Yadav, Sharma or Varma did not acknowledge Naqvi and neither did the ACC chairman applaud when they received their awards.