India dismisses Pakistan bounty on Masood Azhar as 'phony'
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "India dismisses Pakistan bounty on Masood Azhar as 'phony'")
MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal. Photograph: (ANI)
India has dismissed Pakistan’s reward for information on Jaish-e-Mohammed founder Masood Azhar as a hollow publicity exercise, with MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal slamming Islamabad over its failure to take action on terrorists.
India has dismissed Pakistan’s decision to raise a reward on Jaish-e-Mohammed founder Masood Azhar as a hollow publicity exercise timed for international scrutiny.
At the weekly briefing in New Delhi on Tuesday (Sept 15), Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, in response to WION's Sidhant Sibal's question, said that Islamabad’s announcement was familiar theatre.
“Such gimmicks and hoodwinking by Pakistan are nothing new,” he said. “For a state sponsor of terror to make a phoney announcement, we all know how hollow it is. They should take action, not make phony announcements that are of no consequence.”
Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency listed Azhar in its 2026 “Red Book” of most-wanted suspects and advertised a reward of 7 million Pakistani rupees, about $25,000, for information leading to his arrest or conviction. The entry gives a Bahawalpur address, describes him as armed and extremely dangerous, and cites Pakistani cases from 2020 and 2021. A similar bounty of 5 million rupees was advertised in 2021. Islamabad has long said Azhar left for Afghanistan; Kabul has rejected that claim.
The timing has drawn scepticism in New Delhi. An October plenary of the Financial Action Task Force is expected to examine Pakistan’s record on terror financing. According to Indian intelligence assessments, Azhar remains inside Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
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Azhar, designated by the UN Security Council in 2019, is wanted in India over the 2001 Parliament terror attack, later plots and the 2019 Pulwama terror attack.
The same Red Book again names 19 men linked to the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, which killed 166 people. Photographs, Lashkar-e-Taiba affiliations and operational details have been stripped from two entries that were fuller in 2021: those of Muhammad Khan of Turbat and Abdul Rehman of Bahawalnagar.
