New Delhi: In a no-holds-barred attack, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of using the armed forces to protect his image after the Pahalgam attack and dared him to rebut US President Donald Trump's India-Pakistan ceasefire claims.

"If Modi ji has even 50 per cent of the courage that Indira Gandhi had, then clearly he must say in Parliament - Donald Trump is lying," he said. Gandhi also said that if the government had listened to his statement in Lok Sabha a few months ago on China and Pakistan fusing together, they would "not have lost five aircraft" during Operation Sindoor.

Participating in a special discussion in Lok Sabha on "India's strong, successful and decisive Operation Sindoor in response to the terror attack in Pahalgam", he claimed the government revealed sensitive details about Operation Sindoor to Pakistan, soon after it was launched.

"Yesterday, I watched Rajnath Singh ji's speech. He said that Operation Sindoor began at 1:05 in the morning and lasted for 22 minutes. He said a very shocking thing: that at 1:35, we called Pakistan and told them that we had hit non-military targets and we didn't want escalation. These are the words of the Defence Minister of India," the former Congress president said.

"You told Pakistan exactly what you would do: that you would not target military establishments and you didn't want escalation. That's surrender. Immediate surrender in 30 minutes," Gandhi said, slamming the government. He cited remarks by Defence Attache in Indonesia, Group Captain Shiv Kumar, to claim that there were constraints by the political leadership to not attack the Pakistani military establishment and their air defences. Why was the Pakistani government told that India will neither attack their army infrastructure nor their air defence and why were the hands of the Indian Air Force tied, Gandhi asked.

He alleged that the goal of this exercise was to "protect the image of the PM" as he had "blood of Pahalgam victims on his hands". Gandhi said this government is clueless about what deterrence and political will means, and gave Indira Gandhi's example when Pakistan was broken into two parts in 1971.

"I said in this House, three-four months back and they laughed at me. I said please understand that India's biggest foreign policy challenge has been to keep Pakistan and China separate. And I said here that I am sad to say that you have destroyed the single biggest goal of foreign policy. China and Pakistan are fused," Gandhi said.