Masood Azhar. File Image | Photo credit: AP
India on Tuesday (September 15, 2026) called Pakistan’s new announcement of a seven-million-rupee bounty on Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar a “trick”, demanding “concrete action” from Islamabad to combat terrorism.
Pakistan has retained the bounty on Azhar, who remains listed as one of the country’s most wanted terrorists in the country’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Red Book.
Azhar remains wanted in India for major terrorist attacks, including the 2001 Parliament strike, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack and the 2019 Pulwama bombing.
“Such tricks and deception on the part of Pakistan are nothing new. We have seen similar ploys in the past,” External Affairs Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said at his regular media briefing when asked about Pakistan retaining the bounty on Azhar.
“We all know how empty it is for a state sponsor of terrorism to make such false statements. Pakistan must take concrete action rather than making false statements. It doesn’t make any difference,” Mr. Jaiswal added.
India has for years accused Pakistan of harboring Azhar, while Pakistan has claimed he fled to Afghanistan – a claim rejected by the Afghan Taliban government.
For the past few years, Islamabad has been claiming that the JeM founder was operating from Afghanistan.
However, last week the Taliban regime rejected Pakistan’s repeated claims, with a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official saying it was not in the country.
Islamabad’s new reward for information on Azhar comes amid pressure from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to crack down on terrorist groups and their leadership.
The Paris-based global watchdog is set to review Pakistan’s anti-terrorism efforts at its upcoming plenary meeting.
Pakistan was placed on the FATF gray list between 2018 and 2022 due to systemic deficiencies in anti-money laundering and failure to combat terrorist financing.
Key reasons include a failure to curb terrorist financing, particularly the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist networks, and weak implementation of financial sanctions against UN-designated individuals, say people who monitor FATF activities.
To get out of the gray list, Pakistan was forced to take a number of steps, including banning JeM and LeT and their fronts, and convicting the leaders of these groups. One of the people convicted in absentia in 2021 was Masood Azhar. In May 2019, the UN Security Council designated him as a global terrorist.
In 2022, Pakistan was allowed to exit the gray list on the condition that the APG (Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering) continues to review its activities on certain specific issues.
One of the issues on which Pakistan remains under consideration by the APG at the request of the FATF is its ongoing efforts to arrest Azhar.
With its exit from the gray list and the decline in international pressure and attention, Pakistan has backtracked on the promises it made to the FATF to exit the gray list, the people mentioned above said.
Published – September 16, 2026 07:15 EST.