Former Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi highlighted the returning of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman as one of the greatest achievements of the Imran Khan led-government which was ousted by the joint opposition.
Qureshi was addressing the national assembly where he said that following the suicide attack on Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy on February 14, India took action by conducting a surgical strike to eliminate terrorist bases in Pakistan. Qureshi said that Imran Khan gave a decisive answer to the Indian government by ‘firing’ Abhinandan Varthaman. It was unclear what he meant by ‘firing’ but it was clear that Qureshi’s comments were an attempt to save Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s face following its humiliation at the hands of the Pakistan opposition.
However, Qureshi, the former Pakistan foreign minister, may have forgotten what his fellow parliamentarians commented on the same incident at a national assembly session held in 2020.
Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) leader Ayaz Sadiq that year said that Indian Air Force (IAF) Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was released by the Imran Khan government fearing brutal retaliation from India.
Ayaz Sadiq also said that Qureshi possessed information that if the IAF pilot was not released Pakistan could face an attack that very day around 9pm. He reported that Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s legs were shaking when he was alerted about the development.
Varthaman was captured by Pakistan’s army after he downed an F-16 jet of the Pakistan Air Force when India bombed the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror camps in Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan to avenge the death of 40 CRPF personnel killed in Pulwama suicide attack.
Former Chief of the Air Staff BS Dhanoa also while speaking to ANI that year said that if Pakistan would have dwindled and Abhinandan was harmed then it would retaliate harshly. “God forbid if their misadventure would have hit our military installations, we were in a position to wipe out their forward brigades,” Dhanoa told ANI.
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