The Pakistan FIA Red Book issued for 2026 places a reward of PKR 70 lakh on Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and categorises him as a fugitive, the same word Islamabad has used to describe a man its own capital has sheltered for over two decades.

The document is updated once every five years. This edition lands weeks before the Financial Action Task Force plenary in October, and the timing is not incidental. Pakistan has a pattern of producing paperwork on Azhar exactly when the FATF calendar demands it.

What the Pakistan FIA Red Book entry on Azhar carries, and what it conveniently omits

Azhar appears with his father recorded as Khuda Baksh and his affiliation given as Jaish-e-Mohammed. The address on the entry is Kousar Colony, B Model Town, Bahawalpur, a location Pakistani authorities have known for years and never acted on. The reward line states that the federal and provincial governments are offering up to Rs 70 lakh for information leading directly to his apprehension or conviction, and the page marks him as "considered armed and extremely dangerous".

Three first information reports are listed against him, registered by Counter Terrorism Department police stations at Gujranwala, Multan and Lahore between March 2020 and March 2021, all under Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997. Not one has moved to a conviction in five years.

The remarks column cites a Home Department Punjab reference dated 31 December 2021, the same window in which the FIA first carried him at PKR 50 lakh. Five years later, the only thing Islamabad has changed is the number on the page.

The Afghanistan story Pakistan cannot make stick

Since 2021 Pakistan has claimed that Azhar has left its soil for Afghanistan, a line repeated so often it has become the default answer whenever India raises his name. It has never been backed by evidence Pakistan has shared, and it conveniently absolves Islamabad of any obligation to act.

Technical analysis carried out by Indian intelligence agencies over the past six months tells a different story. It places Azhar inside Pakistan, in the city of Nawabshah in Sindh province, Indian security officials said, directly contradicting the narrative Islamabad has sold to the world for five years. It is the second address level Indian finding on Azhar in recent years, after earlier assessments placed him behind the Jaish headquarters complex at Bahawalpur, the very city his FIA entry still lists as home.

Azhar has been under United Nations sanction since 1 May 2019, when the ISIL and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee added him to its list as QDi.422, subject to an assets freeze, a travel ban and an arms embargo the Pakistani state has done nothing visible to enforce. Jaish-e-Mohammed was itself designated in October 2001 and is proscribed in India.

Bahawalpur is also where the Operation Sindoor air strikes of May 2025 went in against Jaish infrastructure, alongside the Lashkar-e-Taiba complex at Muridke, after the Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025 in which 26 civilians were killed. Six Indian armed forces personnel died over the course of that operation and were later named on the Roll of Honour maintained at the National War Memorial in New Delhi.

Nineteen names from 26/11, and the two Pakistan quietly scrubbed

Beyond Azhar, the Pakistan FIA Red Book carries 19 terrorists connected to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, men who assisted the operation, financed it, or ran the boats that carried the attackers.

Seventeen are listed with photographs and specific roles. Two are not, and the timing of that omission is telling. The photographs, Lashkar-e-Taiba affiliations and operational roles of those two have been quietly stripped since the 2021 edition, with only the bare names left behind.

One is Muhammad Khan of Turbat, who provided the boat Al-Hussaini used to move the attackers towards Mumbai. The other is Abdul Rehman of Bahawalnagar. Both had their full roles and photographs printed in the FIA's own 2021 list. Pakistan has since found reason to make that detail disappear rather than to act on it.

The boat crews and the financiers Pakistan still has not prosecuted

Eleven Lashkar-e-Taiba names are listed for facilitating the sea voyage aboard Al-Hussaini and Al-Fauz: Muhammad Amjad Khan of Multan, Shahid Gafoor of Bahawalpur, Mohammad Usman of Sahiwal, Ateeq-ur-Rehman of Lahore, Riaz Ahmad of Hafizabad, Muhammad Mushtaq of Gujranwala, Muhammad Naeem of Dera Ghazi Khan, Abdul Shakoor of Karachi, Muhammad Sabir Salfi of Multan, Muhammad Usman of Lodhran and Shakeel Ahmed of Rahim Yar Khan.

Six more are recorded as having financed the attack, on paper Islamabad itself compiled.

Muhammad Iftikhar Ali of Faisalabad, described as a Lashkar operative, spent PKR 70,000 setting up the VOIP connections that let the attackers talk to their handlers through the three days in Mumbai. Mohammad Zia of Rawalpindi gave PKR 80,000. Mohammad Abbas Nasir of Khanewal put in PKR 2,53,000, Javed Iqbal of Kasur PKR 1,86,430, and Mukhtar Ahmad of Mandi Bahauddin PKR 2,98,047. The largest single contribution recorded is PKR 21 lakh, from Ahmed Saeed of Battagram.

Absconding for 18 years, on Pakistan's own paperwork

The FIA's own position is that all 17 have been absconding since the attacks, an admission that sits oddly beside Islamabad's repeated claims of cooperation on terrorism. Indian intelligence sources assess that every one of the 17 remains inside Pakistan, and that the listing exists to be shown to the FATF rather than to catch anyone.

Not one of the 19 has been prosecuted in Pakistan for the Mumbai attacks themselves, eighteen years on. India has pressed partner governments through the year to hold the line on Pakistan regardless of what Islamabad puts on paper, including the assurance Belgium gave New Delhi this month that it would not extend defence cooperation or technological assistance to Islamabad.

The Red Book itself keeps expanding even as convictions do not. Pakistan's most wanted count has climbed 35 percent in five years, from 1,330 names in the FIA's 2021 edition to 1,804 in the edition released now, a Restricted document with a growing list and a still empty conviction column.