Terrorist or cleric? Pak DG ISPR tries to mislead to cover up army's presence at terrorists' funeral

In Pakistan's tri-services briefing, the DG ISPR has been tactfully twisting facts and blaming it all on the Indian media. However, it's not the Indian media that is confused, but looks like Pakistan is losing track of its own narrative.

Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Director General of ISPR, Pakistan Army's media arm, said that the Indian media has been interchangeably using names of Hafiz Abdul (Abdur) Rauf and Abdul Rauf Azhar. Mind you, both are terrorists.

The latter, Abdul Rauf Azhar was the mastermind behind the Kandahar hijack and the brother of Masood Azhar, who has died in the Indian Operation Sindoor following the dastardly Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives. The news of him being nuetralised along with 100 more terrorists was confirmed by India in one of the briefings.

Abdur Rauf, meanwhile, is alive and was seen leading a funeral at Lashkar-e-Taiba's (LeT) headquarters at Muridke.

The same funeral where terrorists were being accorded state funeral and in attendance were Pakistan army personnel. It's a photograph that speaks a thousand words and quite a statement that shocked the world.

And now, in a hasty attempt to cover their tracks, the ISPR presented a man whose records are identical to that mentioned in US' Office of Foreign Assets Control's sanctions list.

To make him seem authentic, there was a video byte of him saying, he is a cleric and is a family man.

This is on record to prove he's a terrorist, but probably a video of him saying I'm innocent was the need of the hour.

DG ISPR, cited Vikram Doraiswami, India's High Commissioner to the UK for justify his claims.

Here's what Doraiswami had said in an interview with news channel Sky News, where he held the photo of the terrorist, mentioning the how coffins were wrapped in the national flag

Doraiswami said, "This person here is a sanctioned terrorist under the American sanctions regime. His name is Hafiz Abdul Rauf; he's the brother of the founder of the terrorist group you are mentioning."

"Look who's behind him – the Pakistani military. Look at the coffins there; they have the Pakistani national flag. If you are going to be giving terrorists state funerals, what does that make of your system. Everybody knows that for the last 30 years, Pakistan has used this as a means of subcritical warfare against India."