Pakistan’s animosity toward India is so deep-rooted that it continues to trample on its own law and impair its institutions. In a latest move, the interior ministry of Pakistan removed its chief prosecutor from the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks case because he was unbiased and followed the rulebook.

Anyone even slightly suggesting that Pakistan must end its cross-border terrorism against India, or that terror groups like Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are detrimental for Pakistan’s growth and progress as a society, is booted out or persecuted on some pretext or the other.

Last week, a court disqualified Pakistan’s foreign affairs minister Khawaja Asif on the ground that he holds a foreign work permit in UAE. As defence minister, Asif had last year justified putting Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. He had argued that Saeed was a threat to Pakistan and it was in the larger interest of the country to treat terrorists like him as criminals.

Asif was shown the door on the same pattern as former Prime minister Nawaz Sharif who was disqualified from office, through a judicial coup, in the Panama Papers case last year.

Charges against him were unproven, but a religious provision of the Pakistan constitution that requires a public office holder to be “honest” and “righteous” – and is open to subjective interpretation by a judge – was used to force Sharif to quit. Before that event, it was clear from reports in Pakistani media that there was a rift between Sharif and the army-ISI “establishment” over relations with India, where Sharif favoured curbs on terror groups.

Unfortunately, Pakistan does not realize that in the process of using terror groups against India, it is furthering its own deterioration as a state and economy.