Pakistan releases captured fighter pilot to India

An Indian fighter pilot captured by Pakistan earlier this week after his aircraft was shot down in an aerial dogfight over disputed Kashmir state, returned home on Friday.

Wing commander Abhinandan Varthaman walked confidently across the only land-border crossing between the two nuclear-armed neighbours at Wagah in northern Punjab state in a repatriation that had been continually delayed througout the day.

Sharply dressed in a navy blue blazer and grey trousers, the moustachioed 36-year old pilot was handed over to the Indian authorities by Pakistan Rangers paramilitary personnel, who man their country’s borders.

He told Indian officials that he was happy to be back home, after which he was taken by the air force for a medical examination.

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Two days earlier a video clip featuring a trussed up, bloodied and partially blindfolded Varthman was circulated on social media, hours after he had parachuted from his warplane into Pakistani territory, where he was beaten and stoned by locals before being handed over to the army.

Later footage, following Indian government protests, showed him cleaned up and sipping tea with his captors.

Mr Varthaman’s father, a former air marshal and like him a fighter pilot, was a consultant for a feature film two years ago about an Indian Air Force officer whose combat aircraft is downed in Pakistan, where he is taken prisoner.

Mr Varthaman’s release has considerably defused tensions that between the two countries that resurfaced on February 14th,when 40 Indian troops were killed in a suicide bombing in Indian-administered Kashmir that was claimed by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) Islamist group.

In response, India launched a punitive air strike on Tuesday against a JeM militant training camp inside Pakistan, which in turn triggered a retaliatory attack by the Pakistan Air Force that ended with Mr Varthaman’s capture.

And while the two sides, who have fought four wars since independence in 1947– three of them over Kashmir – have for now rowed back from the brink of yet another armed conflagration, the issues that brought them to this juncture endure.

“Unless these matters are addressed head-on by both sides, it will be difficult, if not impossible to restore normalcy,” said a senior Indian diplomat, who declined to be identified. Until then, building mutual trust between the two countries would remain a tough task, he said.

Tough response

Earlier, in a forceful speech India’s prime minister Narendra Modi declared that the tough response by the country’s military to Pakistan had curtailed terrorism, and he suggested India would not shirk from taking further action. “This is an India that will return damage done by terrorists with interest,” he said.

Mr Modi is expected to benefit in the upcoming general elections from his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s militarily pro-active response to Pakistan. But opposition parties questioned the efficacy of India’s air attack inside Pakistan and demanded more information, such satellite imagery, on how successful it really was.

India claimed the air strikes killed “a very large number” of militant fighters, but Pakistan said there had been no casualties.

“We want to know about the actual incident as we have not received any details,” said Mamta Banerjee, chief minister of eastern Bengal state and a principal opposition leader. “We have a right to this information.”

The BJP chief and Mr Modi’s closet aide, Amit Shah, responded by saying that people should decide if they trusted the Indian military or not to undertake its duties. Those who doubted the military were only helping Pakistan, he said.

Officials said the two armies continued to exchange mortar and small arms fire late in the evening across the disputed line of control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, both of which claim the disputed state it in its entirety.