HEMENDRA BARTWAL, SR. JOURNALIST
BALAKOT, INSIDE STORY: An interesting evening this weekend with Italian journalist Francesca Marino whose book on Indian air strikes on terrorist training camps in Balakot, Pakistan, in 2019 has just been released here.
‘Pulwama to Payback — Balakot, The Inside Story’ has been published by Vitasta Publishing.
Renu Kaul Verma, the very successful owner publisher, and her husband Sudesh Verma are old friends who had hosted a small dinner gathering at home for Francesca to meet some close friends from journalism and academia.
In her latest book, Francesca Marino brings some STARTLING eye witness accounts of the Balakot air strikes by India in response to the deadly Pulwama terrorist attacks in Kashmir a few days earlier.
Based on her reportage in media at that time, this book exposes “the web of denial and deception that Pakistan had spun so skilfully for the international press”.
Following the Indian Air Force operation that destroyed the Jaish-e-Mohammed training camps in Balakot, killing a large number of terrorists there, Pakistan had completely denied any such air strike or even the existence of any camp
at that site.
“From cross- border infiltration into Jammu & Kashmir to the terror group’s links with the Taliban’s new regime in Afghanistan, ‘Balakot, The Inside Story’ is a gripping account of a deadly network of terrorist links that puts Kashmir at the centre of an ever-brewing storm”.
Francesca writes for leading media in Italy, India and Switzerland. She has reported on South Asia affairs for over thirty years now. She has also authored other books like ‘Apocalypse Pakistan’ and ‘Balochistan: Bruised, Battered and Bloodied’.
Pic on top shows Nupur and myself with Francesca. Pic below shows us sharing a laugh with Renu while remembering the good old days at ‘Hindustan Times’ when many of us were staying in Mayur Vihar and had a lively ‘party group’ …
