India on Friday rejected claims made in a US newspaper report, which suggested that the opposition in the Maldives asked New Delhi for $6 million to help with a plan to impeach President Mohamed Muizzu. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the allegations were unfounded and "without credibility," claiming that the reporter and the publication both displayed "a compulsive hostility." 

"These are articles that you referred were published by Washington Post, one on Maldives and the other one in relation to Pakistan. So to that, I would say that both the newspaper and the reporter in question appear to nurse a compulsive hostility towards India. You can see a pattern in their activities. I leave you to judge their credibility. As far as we are concerned, they have none," Randhir Jaiswal said in a weekly press briefing.  The controversy arose from a report by The Washington Post, which stated that Maldivian opposition politicians suggested bribing 40 members of parliament, including some from Muizzu's party, as part of a supposed impeachment plan. The report was based on an internal document called the "Democratic Renewal Initiative."

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson responded to a Washington Post report, which claimed that India had secretly carried out killings in Pakistan targeting terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. The spokesperson warned Pakistan about the presence of these terrorist groups. "On Pakistan, I would like to quote to you what [former US Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton said, 'you can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours'...", said MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal. 

In 2011, Clinton sent a direct message to Pakistan, urging them to take stronger action to remove safe havens for extremism, for the sake of the world and their own citizens.  "It's like that old story you can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours. Eventually, those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard," Clinton had stated at a joint news conference in Islamabad with Hina Rabbani Khar, the foreign minister of Pakistan at the time. 

MEA spokesperson Jaiswal also touched upon the arrest of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna in Bangladesh. “We urge a fair trial”, said Randhir Jaiswal, the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, at a weekly media briefing on January 3. On Friday, India urged the Bangladeshi authorities to ensure that Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari gets a fair trial. He was arrested by Dhaka Police on November 25 in connection with a sedition case. His bail request was rejected on Thursday, January 2.