The Indian government on Tuesday dismissed Pakistan’s decision to raise the reward for information on terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a “gimmick”. The Ministry of External Affairs, at its regular briefing, said such announcements from a “state sponsor of terror” were part of a pattern.
“Such gimmicks and hoodwinking by Pakistan is not new.
We have seen such gimmicks in the past as well,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, responding to a question at the media briefing. “For a state sponsor of terror to make an announcement, a phoney announcement — we all know how hollow it is,” Jaiswal said.
He founded Jaish-e-Mohammed the following year. Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency has listed Azhar as a fugitive in its 2026 Red Book of most wanted high-profile terrorists and raised the reward on him by Pakistan rupees 20 lakh to PKR 70 lakh (roughly 24 lakh INR), according to reports citing intelligence sources. The FIA had first placed a reward on him in 2021. JeM’s Markaz Subhanallah facility at Bahawalpur, about 100 km inside Pakistan, was among the sites the Indian armed forces said they destroyed during Operation Sindoor in May 2025, launched after the Pahalgam terror attack. Azhar, who was in an Indian jail, was released from Indian custody in December 1999 in exchange for the passengers and crew of Indian Airlines flight IC-814, which was hijacked from Kathmandu and flown to Kandahar in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. This outfit has been blamed for the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2016 Pathankot air base attack and the 2019 Pulwama bombing.
Azhar subsequently said members of his family and some close associates were killed in the strike.
