Pakistan plays tit-for-tat as Karachi's Sindh Club refuses to host Indian High Commissioner

Karachi's elite Sindh Club refused to host Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan TCA Raghavan and his wife for a function on October 26, reported a leading daily.

Invited by Pakistan-India Citizens' Friendship Forum, Raghavan was supposed to be a part of an event related to India, for which he had already checked into his hotel, to only discover at the eleventh hour that the Sindh Club had decided not to host him, report said. 

No comment has been made on the incident by any of the group members including Liaquat Merchant, the grandson of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who is a co-chairman of the group. The Club reportedly didn't give any reason whatsoever as to why it made such decision to back out at the last moment. The club was established in 1871.

There have been a similar series of episodes in India, starting with the Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit earlier this year who was supposed to visit Chandigarh but had to call it off after the Punjab and Haryana governments refused to host him. Earlier this month, ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali's performance in Mumbai was called off after the Shiv Sena threatened to jeopardise it. Another such controversial incident was the launch of Pakistan's former minister of foreign affairs Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri's book. This was followed by the cancellation of a scheduled meeting between the BCCI officials and Pakistan Cricket Board Chief Shahryar Khan.