Niece of former Pakistan PM Bhutto calls for release of captured Indian pilot

Fatima Bhutto asked the Imran Khan government to free the Indian pilot who was taken into custody on Wednesday following air combat over the divided region of Kashmir.

India and Pakistan must maintain a “profoundly moral stand” as tensions escalate between the two nuclear-armed nations, the niece of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and granddaughter of former PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto wrote in an emotional New York Times op-ed.

While “hysteria is at a high,” Bhutto said she does not want to see soldiers from both sides become victims of the conflict.

I and many other young Pakistanis have called upon our country to release the captured Indian pilot as a gesture of our commitment to peace, humanity and dignity. We have spent a lifetime at war. I do not want to see Pakistani soldiers die. I do not want to see Indian soldiers die. We cannot be a subcontinent of orphans.

On Wednesday, the Pakistani military claimed it downed two Indian warplanes over its air space and arrested the pilot who survived the crash. Local media later showed footage of the captured man blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back. India demanded the “immediate and safe return” of the pilot.

Islamabad was reacting to an Indian air raid on a Pakistani-controlled area that was the first cross-border air attack since the Indo-Pakistani War in 1971. New Delhi claimed the warplanes targeted terrorist camps in the contested territory.

Early on Thursday, the Indian authorities accused the Pakistani military of mortar shelling along the Line of Control in Kashmir. The Indian Army retaliated “strongly and effectively,” according to local media.

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