The Pakistani flag on the historic table at the Raj Bhavan in Shimla, on which the Simla Agreement was signed, went missing on Friday, news agency PTI reported. This came a day after Islamabad suspended the 1972 accord as ties with India nosedived following the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam.
Pakistan’s move to suspend the Simla Agreement was in response to the retaliatory actions taken by India in the aftermath of the massacre of 25 Indians and a Nepali national in the terror attack in Pahalgam on Tuesday.
The pact was signed by the then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and then-Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on the intervening nights of July 2 and 3.
The glossy wooden table on which the agreement was signed is kept in the Kirti Hall of the Himachal Pradesh Raj Bhavan on an elevated red-coloured platform cordoned off with brass railings with a plate which reads, “Simla Agreement was signed here on 3-7-1972”, PTI reported.
A photograph of Bhutto signing the agreement and Indira Gandhi sitting beside him is still kept on the table, while several other photographs of the India-Pakistan Summit of 1972 hang on the wall in the background.
