Maulana Masood Azhar is very much in Pakistan: Indian intelligence agencies

New Delhi: Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar is very much in Pakistan, according to an assessment by the Indian intelligence agencies.

“He could be in Bahawalpur which is Jaish’s headquarters or in Balochistan. He is in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan,” said a source.

The source added that Pakistan deliberately engineered a leak in an Afghan news organisation "Aamaj” that it made a request to Taliban authorities to locate and hand over Masood Azhar, wanted in India for the Parliament attack case, Pathankot airbase attack and many other terror strikes in the last two decades.

Following the appearance of the news about Islamabad’s request to Kabul on Azhar in the Pashto language news organisation in Afghanistan, Pakistan-based channel Geo News did a follow-up story on it leading to a statement by the Taliban Administration that Jaish-e-Mohammdd (JeM) chief was not in Afghanistan.

The Taliban's interim Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid also denounced Pakistan by saying that such organisations (JeM) can operate on Pakistan's soil, and even under official patronage. “We'll not allow anyone to use Afghanistan's soil against any other country,” he added.  

As per the Indian assessment, Pakistan has engineered this whole drama for the sake of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) plenary slated to be held in Paris next month.

According to Pakistani media reports, a 15-member delegation of the FATF and its affiliate Asia Pacific Group made an on-site visit to Pakistan from Aug 29 to Sept 2 to verify Islamabad’s compliance with a 34-point action plan committed in 2018 when Pakistan was brought under the FATF grey list.

In a statement, the Pakistan foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the focus of the visit was to validate Pakistan’s high-level commitment and sustainability of reforms in the anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) reg­ime and that the meetings were held in “a constructive and positive atmosphere”.

“It’s not a coincidence that following the FATF team visit, news appeared that Masood Azhar was in Afghanistan,” said an Indian official who spoke to NewsDrum on the condition of anonymity.

According to an Indian intelligence assessment, Azhar was in Bahawalpur till the Taliban captured Kabul. The Pakistani spy agency ISI instructed Azhar to shift base to Afghanistan but it hasn’t happened so far as the open presence of Azhar in Afghanistan is not going help the Taliban cause in the world community, however sympathetic a section of Taliban may be towards the JeM chief.