New Delhi: India has demanded that Pakistan take strict action against Masood Azhar, after the UN-designated terrorist addressed the cadre of the Jaish-e-Mohammed after almost two decades last month.
“He is a UN-designated terrorist. We demand that strong action be taken against him, that he is brought to justice. There has been denial that he is not there in Pakistan. If the reports (of his location) are correct then it exposes the duplicity of Pakistan,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at a press briefing Friday.
“Masood Azhar is involved in cross-border terror attacks against India and we want that strong action be taken against him,” he added.
Azhar has promised renewed terrorist attacks against India and Israel with the aim of creating a new Islamic world order. As reported by ThePrint earlier, the speech was likely made last month and can be proven as new given its references to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
In his latest address, Azhar called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “weakling” and promised to send armed individuals to reclaim Kashmir, and even raised the issue of the Babri Masjid. The speech had a number of explicit calls to violence focused on India and Israel.
Azhar has been restricted from making public appearances since 2003, following an attack on General Pervez Musharraf, the former military ruler of Pakistan, by a breakaway faction of the Jaish.
In 2022, then Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto announced that Azhar had escaped to Afghanistan just before Islamabad was set to declare him a proclaimed offender.
As reported by ThePrint, Azhar’s address came just days after a closed-door India-Pakistan meeting between representatives of the foreign ministries of both two countries in Muscat. Party representatives from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress were also present at the meeting, along with observers from the US Department of State and China.
Azhar, the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, was in Indian prisons for almost five years, before being released and handed over to the hijackers of Indian Airlines Flight IC-814, which was hijacked during its trip from Kathmandu to New Delhi. He is said to have masterminded a series of terrorist attacks including the 2001 Parliament attack, and the 2016 Pathankot attack.
On 1 May 2019, Azhar was designated an international terrorist by the United Nations Security Council for his association with al-Qaeda.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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