The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has nothing to conceal in relation to a deadly attack on a military convoy in Kashmir in 2019, according to India’s home minister.

Earlier this month, Satya Pal Malik, the then-governor of Jammu and Kashmir, said that paramilitary soldiers were refused air travel and forced to go by road due to intelligence failures to detect a danger.

According to local news site the Wire, Malik informed Modi that the attack was a failure on the side of the administration but was instructed to remain silent.

Home Minister Amit Shah, speaking in a roundtable discussion on the India Today TV programme, said the credibility of the comments needed to be questioned.

“I would surely tell the people of the country that the Bharatiya Janata Party government has done nothing that needs to be hidden,” he said.

His comments are the government’s first response to Malik’s allegations.

A suicide bomber rammed a car into a bus carrying Indian paramilitary police in Kashmir on February 14, 2019, killing 40 of them in the deadliest attack in decades on security forces in the disputed region and raising tensions with arch foe Pakistan.

The Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Kashmir is a Muslim-majority region at the heart of decades of hostility between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. The neighbours both rule parts of the region while claiming the entire territory as theirs.