India cricket star calls for Pakistan World Cup boycott
India would at the very least forfeit the match points if they boycott the group game.
NEW DELHI (AFP) - Former Indian spiner Harbhajan Singh has called for India to boycott their World Cup game against Pakistan in June in protest at a Pulwama attack which left more than 40 Indian soldiers dead.
Singh said: "There is no need for any relations with Pakistan, let alone cricket. "Don t play the World Cup match with Pakistan on June 16 -- country comes first for all of us and we are all standing with our forces," added the 38-year-old, who played his last Test in 2015 but is still an Indian Premier League regular.
India would at the very least forfeit the match points if they boycott the group game to be played in Manchester. But Singh said this would not matter.
"I don t care about losing points as the Indian team is powerful enough to win the World Cup without playing Pakistan," Singh said.
Pulwama attack
At least 44 Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed on Thursday in Indian-occupied Kashmir in one the deadliest attacks. The attack saw explosives packed inside a van rip through buses in a convoy of 78 vehicles carrying some 2,500 members of the paramilitary CRPF.
Two blue buses carrying around 35 people each bore the brunt of the massive blast, heard miles away, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the city of Srinagar on the main highway to Jammu.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since independence. Rebels have been fighting for an independent Kashmir, or a merger with Pakistan, for 30 years.
Last year was the deadliest in a decade, with rights monitors saying almost 600 Kashmiri people died, most of them civilians. Thousands more have been maimed in recent years by pellet-firing shotguns used by Indian forces.
