The main border crossing checkpost between India and Pakistan will be closed with immediate effect and Pakistani nationals will not be allowed to travel to India under special visas following a deadly civilians attack.
India announced a number of measures to downgrade its ties with Pakistan on Wednesday, a day after suspected militants killed 26 men in Pahalgam, Kashmir in the worst attack on civilians in the country in nearly two decades.
The Indian government blamed the attack on Pakistan-based militants. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri addressed the media, stating that a special security cabinet meeting confirmed the attack's cross-border origins, prompting immediate action.
Among the retaliatory measures, India will suspend a vital water-sharing treaty concerning the Indus River system.
Defense advisors at the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi have also been expelled, and the Indian High Commission in Islamabad will see its staff reduced from 55 to 30.
At least 17 people were also injured in the shooting that took place on Tuesday in the Baisaran valley in the Pahalgam area of the scenic, Himalayan federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
The dead included 25 Indians and one Nepalese national, police said.
It was the worst attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai shootings, and shattered the relative calm in Kashmir, where tourism has boomed as an anti-India insurgency has waned in recent years.
A little-known militant group, the "Kashmir Resistance," claimed responsibility for the attack in a social media message. It expressed discontent that more than 85,000 "outsiders" had been settled in the region, spurring a "demographic change".
Indian security agencies say Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, is a front for Pakistan-based militant organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.
Pakistan denies accusations that it supports militant violence in Kashmir and says it only provides moral, political and diplomatic support to the insurgency there.
