India should pressurise Imran Khan to handover Masood Azhar: Manish Tewari

Senior Congress leader Manish Tewari Saturday said India should put pressure on Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to handover Masood Azhar, the founder of terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

The Pakistan-based terror outfit has claimed responsibility for Thursday's terror strike in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district in which 40 CRPF jawans were killed.

"If we put sufficient pressure on Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, and if Imran Khan is really serious about his intent to make peace, which he tried to demonstrate in the Kartarpur corridor outreach initiative, then the next logical step would to be to handover Maulana Masood Azhar to India," Tewari said.

The former Union minister was in Mumbai to launch his book "The Fables of Fractured Times", a compilation of his articles written for various newspapers and other media platforms during 2017-18.

"You (Union government) need to put Imran Khan in the dock. You need to put Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Khan's party) in the dock. This is the job that you need to do very vociferously," Tewari said.

The senior Congress leader said Azhar had extensively campaigned for Khan during last year's assembly polls in Pakistan's Punjab province.

"The next 15 to 20 days are going to be very crucial for the country. Let me also say that we have already stated that we are going to be with government," Tewari said.

He added that India needs to mobilise the international community to isolate Pakistan.

The Congress leader said India had failed to devise a mechanism to deal with Pakistan and claimed the latter's policy to bleed the country to avenge the defeat and dismemberment in the 1971 war was paying the neighbouring country some dividends.

In an interaction with his party colleague Sanjay Jha at the event, Tewari said the UPA was voted out in 2014 as the people had grown "sick" of them.

"The reality is that people voted for Modi in 2014 because they were sick of us. That is the hard reality," he said.