"British authorities held formal recorded interviews with senior MQM officials who told them the party was receiving Indian funding, the BBC was told," the report said. "Meanwhile a Pakistani official has told the BBC that India has trained hundreds of MQM militants in explosives, weapons and sabotage over the last 10 years in camps in North and North East India."
Indian authorities have denied all claims, calling them "completely baseless", while the MQM has declined to comment. This is not the first time that the MQM, a party that primarily represents mohajirs, refugees who travelled over to Pakistan from India, has been connected with New Delhi. The allegations also come against the backdrop of the Pakistani authorities, the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence attempting to crack down on MQM influence in Karachi, a city that was once run entirely by the party.
If the allegations manage to stick, they will end up tarring the party that has 24 members in the National Assembly. They could also result in more tensions between India and Pakistan, a few weeks after Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said that India would be willing to neutralise terrorists using other terrorists.
However, the sourcing of the BBC report is a bit convoluted. The article doesn't have any quotes or documents, and simply says that the information comes from a Pakistani official who was aware of what MQM officials said to Scotland Yard. It didn't come from the MQM officials themselves or even for that matter from any British authorities. That, plus the failure to acknowledge what the authorities in Pakistan have been trying to do to the MQM, prompted many Pakistanis themselves to question the veracity of the BBC account.
Very stupid and one-sided BBC report on MQM. The content is hardly substantiated. Getting polo5ocal opponents to comment, really OBJ?
— Marvi Sirmed (@marvisirmed) June 24, 2015
A #Pakistan source told OBJ that some #MQM officials told UK authorities who told the source who told OBJ.... I have a headache now.
— Mehreen Zahra-Malik (@mehreenzahra) June 24, 2015
To paraphrase previous tweets: do we even have one UK source confirming what authoritative #Pakistan source said about MQM and Indian funds?
— Mehreen Zahra-Malik (@mehreenzahra) June 24, 2015
Nothing new in the BBC report on MQM -- quite frankly I thought would have some startling revelation -- quotes a single unnamed Pak source
— omar r quraishi (@omar_quraishi) June 24, 2015
Of course, on the more nationalist side of the Twittersphere, plenty of Pakistanis took this as evidence of the problematic nature of the MQM as well as India's allegedly perfidious involvement in domestic politics. If proved to be true, this would allow Pakistan to claim some moral equivalence after decades of the world acknowledging that Islamabad is a perpetrator of state violence.
As was to be expected, Indians on Twitter also poured scorn on the flimsy sourcing of the report.
BBC claims India funds MQM without releasing a single recording or transcript of so called conversations with MQM? Very weak on reading
— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) June 24, 2015
So basis for contention of Indian funding to MQM - a major allegation - is 'British authorities told Beeb' ? No quotes/ transcripts?
— Sreenivasan Jain (@SreenivasanJain) June 24, 2015
@suhasinih with all due respect to bbc,it quotes one Pakistani official saying that's what MQM told UK.Is there any confirmatn from UK side?
— Devirupa Mitra (@DevirupaM) June 24, 2015