India has asked Pakistan on Friday to take strong action against the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar, after reports emerged that he delivered a speech recently at a public gathering in the Pakistani city of Bahawalpur. While speaking during a weekly briefing, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal slammed Pakistan, saying that if Masood Azhar is in Pakistan, it exposes the country’s duplicity.
Masood Azhar is a radical Islamist terrorist, he is also the founder and leader of the Pakistan-based terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed, active mainly in the Pakistani-administered portion of the Kashmir region. Azhar, known to be the mastermind of the 2019 Pulwama terror attack, was designated as a global terrorist by the UN Security Council the same year.
“He is a UN-designated terrorist. We demand that strong action be taken against him so that he is brought to justice. There has been a denial that he is not there in Pakistan. What you are referring to, if the reports are correct, then it exposes the duplicity of Pakistan. Masood Azhar is involved in cross-border terror attacks in India. We want that strong action to be taken against him,” Jaiswal said.
The remarks came when the MEA was asked about reports that Azhar delivered a speech at a public gathering in Bahawalpur, Pakistan last month. Jaiswal also questioned Pakistan’s persistent position that Azhar is not in the country. In 2022, the then Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto had reportedly said that Azhar had fled to Afghanistan.
India had released Azhar in 1999 in exchange for freeing the hostages of hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 (IC814). In his speech last month, Azhar reportedly said “fearful rulers” who do not believe in the word of Allah and “jihad” have “led us to defeat” in Kashmir, Palestine and other Muslim lands. Azhar is also believed to be the mastermind of the 2001 terror attack on Parliament and the 2016 Pathankot strikes. Over the last few years, India has been asking Pakistan to take stringent action against the JeM chief.
Earlier this year in March, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar emphasized the complex situation of dealing with a neighbour like Pakistan and said that Islamabad uses terrorism as an instrument of statecraft and does not even hide from the fact. “Every country wants a stable neighbourhood…we have been unfortunate, or ill-starred, to be blessed with the one we have to our west. How do you deal with a neighbour, who does not hide the fact that they use terrorism as an instrument of statecraft?” Jaishankar said at an event in Singapore. In a veiled dig at Pakistan, the EAM said that in the country, terrorism exists almost at “industry level” and “assembly line”.
Jaishankar added that India has decided that it will have to find a way to address the problem because dodging it will only invite more trouble “I don’t have a quick, instantaneous fix, but what I can tell you is that India will not skirt this problem anymore… If we have a problem, we must be honest enough to face up to the problem. If you have to have those discussions, we should; if it’s hard to find a solution, we must work through it. We should not give the other country free pass, in India the mood is not to overlook terrorism,” the EAM said.