New Delhi: There was intense speculation about Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar on Sunday with one report suggesting that he has died of liver cancer in Islamabad.
Azhar, who was being treated at an army hospital, died on Saturday, the reports claimed. Pakistan or JeM, however, are yet to officially confirm or announce Azhar’s death. “I don’t know anything at this moment,” Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry told PTI, when asked about the media reports. Only Geo Urdu stuck its neck out and claimed that Azhar is alive. Intelligence agencies, too, were trying to ascertain the facts.
In an interview to CNN on March 1, foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had confirmed that Azhar was in Pakistan and that he was “really unwell”. “He is in Pakistan, according to my information. He is unwell to the extent that he can’t leave his house, because he’s really unwell,” Qureshi had said, adding that the Pakistan government would act against him only if New Delhi presented “solid” and “inalienable” evidence that can stand in a court of law.
Sceptics point out that Pakistan may have planted the news about Azhar’s demise for its own good reasons. Meanwhile, a conflicting report said that Azhar was badly injured in the air raid on the terror camp at Balakot and died in a hospital. Twitter erupted on Sunday over the ‘news’ of Azhar’s death, with the claim that he was killed in the airstrike finding favour.
Netizens, as is their wont, went a step further and asserted that Pakistan could portray it as a natural death. They seemed to discount the version that Azhar was suffering from renal failure and undergoing regular dialysis at an army hospital in Rawalpindi. One Ashima on Twitter seemed to have the last word.
The tweet said: Rumours of death of Masood Azhar can help Pak in two ways — Defuse India’s anger and enable Masood Azhar to go underground & regroup. Beware! Don’t believe anything so soon, he concluded. What has confounded confusion is that, on one hand, there is no credible confirmation about the number of casualties in Balakot and, on the other hand, the Pakistani establishment is in denial mode.
The Indian government, too, is yet to take a call on furnishing the evidence of the fatalities; in this highly fluid situation, a video clip of Masood Azhar’s brother Maulana Ammar had surfaced on Saturday where he can be heard accepting that the Balakot camp had taken a hit. The recording is said to be from a public function organized in Peshawar after the air strike.
