Islamabad summons India's charge d'affaires over two deaths in the Bedian sector

Pakistan summoned India's charge d'affaires on Saturday over the killing of two Pakistani civilians in the Bedian sector of the international border, the foreign ministry in Islamabad said. It said Border Security Force personnel used lethal force on Friday against people it described as unarmed. A third person was wounded. Neither India's external affairs ministry nor the BSF had responded to Reuters by the time of its dispatch.

The ministry's statement said the force was unprovoked, wholly unjustified and grossly disproportionate, and that it had cost two lives. It said Pakistan categorically rejected any attempt to describe the dead as infiltrators. It asked India for an immediate investigation, disciplinary and legal action against those found responsible, and a formal report of the findings to Islamabad.

Indian media, Al Jazeera reported, quoted security sources saying the incident was an infiltration attempt that border forces had stopped. Those sources were not named. The Pakistani statement is a direct answer to that framing. The two accounts cannot both be the full description of the same shooting, and neither side has published names, ages, or the distance from the fence at which the shots were fired.

Bedian sits on the Punjab stretch of the international border, east of Lahore, not on the Line of Control in Kashmir. That distinction matters for the legal and military chain. The BSF, not the Indian Army, holds the international border. A summons of the charge d'affaires, rather than a public note only, is the step Islamabad uses when it wants the protest on the record inside the Indian mission. Reuters said the ministry described the force as unprovoked lethal force against unarmed civilians. Al Jazeera quoted the same rejection of the infiltrator label.

No names of the dead or the wounded person have been released by either foreign ministry. No photograph of the site, no calibre, and no time of day beyond Friday have been put in the official Pakistani text carried by the wires. The absence of names makes the incident harder to check against hospital records in Lahore district. It also means the infiltrator claim, carried by Indian media from unnamed security sources, has no named person attached to it either.

Cross-border shooting on this sector is not new, but a diplomatic summons on a Saturday, with both capitals already in a hard patch of the relationship, fixes the incident as a state-to-state dispute rather than a local fence event. Pakistan's demand for a written finding is the part that can be tested. If New Delhi answers, the answer will have to choose between the infiltrator account and silence. If it stays silent, the Pakistani statement stands as the only on-record official version.

The charge d'affaires is the senior diplomat present when the high commissioner is away or the post is between appointments. Summoning that officer is the ordinary protest tool. It does not by itself expel anyone or close a border crossing. What it does is require the Indian mission to transmit a text. The text Islamabad wants back is an investigation result, not a mutual expression of concern.

Until names and a time are published, the verifiable core is narrow. Two people are dead, one is wounded, the place named by Pakistan is Bedian, the date is Friday, and the summons happened on Saturday. The label each side wants, civilian or infiltrator, is still an allegation. The next document that would move the story is an Indian reply, a BSF incident report, or a Pakistani release of the names.