Pakistan puts bounty on Masood Azhar ahead of FATF meeting
Pakistan has offered a 70 lakh rupee reward for Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar days before an FATF review, even as intelligence points to him hiding in Sindh
Just ahead of an upcoming meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which has threatened international economic sanctions, Pakistan has repeated an old political drama. The Pakistan government has placed Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar in the Federal Investigation Agency's (FIA) Red Book of most-wanted terrorists and announced a reward of 70 lakh rupees for his arrest.
The move appears to be a hurried step to avoid being placed on the black or grey list at the FATF meeting due in October. Pakistan has staged similar dramas under international pressure before. The Indian Army's Operation Sindoor had successfully struck nine terrorist locations in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. After that operation, Masood Azhar himself publicly acknowledged the deaths of nine members of his family and stepped back from activity. Now the Pakistan government is pretending he is not even present in the country.
Pakistan has previously claimed that Masood Azhar is hiding not in Pakistan but in Afghanistan. In 2021, the FIA had set a reward of 50 lakh rupees for information leading to his capture. Five years later, that reward has now been increased by 20 lakh rupees to 70 lakh rupees. However, technical investigation by Indian intelligence agencies and a recent report have revealed startling information. An investigation over the past six months has found that Masood Azhar is not in Afghanistan but is hiding under full security in Nawabshah city in Pakistan's Sindh province.
The FIA's new Red Book includes the names of 19 terrorists who directly or indirectly helped the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, including those who sent money to the attackers and those who helped operate boats used to bring them to Mumbai by sea. The list gives photographs and details of the specific roles of 17 of these terrorists in the Mumbai attack. But evidence of Pakistan's double standards is that the photographs of two key individuals, along with their links to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and their role in the attack, have been deliberately removed.
Mohammed Khan, a resident of Turbat who provided the boat named Al-Hussaini used to carry the attackers to Mumbai, remains named in the list, but his photograph and his links to Lashkar-e-Taiba have been removed. Similarly, the photograph and details of Abdul Rehman of Bahawalnagar were present in the FIA's 2021 list but his photograph has been removed from this year's list. However, the names of 11 senior Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who landed 10 attackers in Mumbai using the boats Al-Hussaini and Al-Fauz remain on the list.
Even as the Pakistan government misleads the world by placing a 70 lakh rupee bounty on Masood Azhar, a video has surfaced of a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist openly admitting that his organisation collected around 1.5 arab Pakistani rupees, roughly 150 crore rupees, for terrorist activities over the past year. This makes clear that the 70 lakh rupee reward is merely a show staged to display action ahead of the FATF meeting. In reality, terrorist organisations are raising crores of rupees on Pakistani soil and operating without fear.
