India is set to confront Pakistan at the Financial Action Task Force plenary in Paris over Islamabad's failure to take verifiable action against Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, with the Taliban government's rejection of Pakistan's claim that the terrorist leader is in Afghanistan emerging as a key point of contention.
The plenary, which runs from October 28 to 30, brings together representatives from more than two hundred jurisdictions and observer organisations to discuss money laundering, terrorist financing and other threats to the global financial system.
New Delhi's case centres on a contradiction that Indian officials believe undermines Pakistan's explanation for its failure to arrest Azhar. Islamabad has long maintained that Azhar fled to Afghanistan in 2019, which it has offered as a reason why it cannot act against him. But the Taliban administration in Kabul has publicly denied that the Jaish chief is present on Afghan soil, removing a key alibi that Pakistan has used to deflect international scrutiny.
In September, Taliban spokesperson Zia Ahmad Thakal said Azhar was not in Afghanistan and that Pakistan had not formally communicated with the Afghan authorities about his presence there. He also reiterated the Taliban administration's stated position that Afghan territory should not be used against other countries.
Indian officials have seized on that denial, arguing that Pakistan's claims about Azhar's location need to be examined alongside its record of implementing international sanctions against designated terrorist individuals and organisations.
According to people familiar with the matter, Indian officials have approached diplomats from partner countries and key FATF members to build support ahead of the Paris meeting. The diplomatic push is aimed at putting Pakistan's counter-terrorism record under renewed international scrutiny and at pressing for verifiable enforcement, rather than assurances, when it comes to designated terrorists and their financing networks.
The issue carries significance beyond the search for one individual. It brings together India's long-running concerns over cross-border terrorism, Pakistan's past record under FATF monitoring, and the international community's efforts to prevent terrorist groups from accessing financial resources.
India is also expected to raise the case of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed, another United Nations-designated terrorist, and to highlight what it describes as persistent loopholes in terror financing and digital fundraising networks used by Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Azhar is one of India's most wanted men. He was released from Indian custody in December 1999 in exchange for the passengers and crew aboard hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814, and he founded Jaish-e-Mohammed in 2000. He is wanted by India in connection with several major terror attacks, including the 2001 attack on Parliament, the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack and the 2019 Pulwama bombing, in which forty Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed.
The United Nations has designated him as a global terrorist.
Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency has included Azhar in its 2026 Red Book of most-wanted terrorists, offering a reward of seven million Pakistani rupees, approximately seventy lakh Indian rupees, for information leading to his arrest or conviction. India has criticised Pakistan for announcing a bounty on Azhar instead of taking action against a man it says is on Pakistani soil, arguing that a reward is no substitute for arrest and prosecution.
Indian intelligence officials, as reported by Indian media, believe Azhar was in Bahawalpur at the time of Operation Sindoor and was subsequently moved to a military hospital in Rawalpindi, where he has reportedly been treated previously for renal failure. These claims about his precise whereabouts have not been independently confirmed, and Pakistan has not publicly responded to them in detail.
What is not in dispute, however, is the public contradiction between Pakistan's claim that Azhar is in Afghanistan and the Taliban's denial that he is there.
The Paris meeting is the first FATF plenary under the presidency of Giles Thomson of the United Kingdom, and the FATF is likely to review Pakistan's anti-terror efforts during the session. Pakistan has been through this process before. During the 2018 to 2019 enforcement period, India, along with the United States and allied nations, successfully pushed for Pakistan to be placed on the FATF Grey List, primarily over insufficient action against Hafiz Saeed.
India had also raised the Jaish-e-Mohammed issue at that time in connection with the Pulwama attack. Pakistan was later removed from the Grey List in 2022, after it was judged to have completed an action plan to strengthen its anti-money laundering and counter-terror financing regime.
The question now is whether the Azhar case, combined with concerns about digital funding networks, will lead to fresh pressure on Pakistan. Grey-listing carries real economic consequences: it increases scrutiny of financial transactions, raises the cost of borrowing and trade, and signals to investors and international institutions that a country's financial system is vulnerable to illicit finance.
Pakistan, which is seeking to demonstrate compliance with international counter-terror financing obligations, will be keen to avoid a return to the list.
India's broader argument is that enforcement against designated terrorists must be verifiable. It is not enough, in New Delhi's view, for a country to list a terrorist as wanted or to announce a reward; there must be evidence of prosecution, asset freezing and action against the networks that fund and support the individual and his organisation.
In Azhar's case, India points to Jaish-e-Mohammed's continued operational activity, including its presence at launchpads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as evidence that the group has not been dismantled.
The timing of the diplomatic push is significant. The plenary comes at a moment of heightened tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the two countries trading accusations over cross-border militancy. Pakistan has accused the Taliban administration of harbouring militants who attack Pakistan, while Kabul has denied those claims and accused Islamabad of violating Afghan sovereignty.
The Azhar dispute sits awkwardly within that larger quarrel, because Pakistan's claim that a wanted terrorist fled to Afghanistan is now contradicted by the very government it accuses of sheltering militants.
For the FATF's member countries, the Azhar case will be one item among many at a plenary that covers the full range of global financial crime threats. But for India, it is a test of whether the international system can hold a country to account for a designated terrorist who has been wanted for more than two decades. New Delhi's diplomats have spent weeks building support among partner countries, and the outcome in Paris will show how much weight that argument carries.
Pakistan, for its part, is expected to argue that it has taken steps against UN-designated terrorists, including action against Hafiz Saeed, and that it has strengthened its legal and institutional framework for countering terror financing since its removal from the Grey List. It may also argue that the Taliban's denial does not prove Azhar's location, and that the search for a fugitive across a porous border region is genuinely difficult.
The plenary's conclusions, when published, will be read closely in both New Delhi and Islamabad. A statement that singles out Pakistan's record on designated terrorists would be a diplomatic win for India. A more general discussion, without specific pressure, would allow Pakistan to claim that its compliance efforts have been recognised.
Either way, the contradiction at the heart of the Azhar case — Pakistan says he is in Afghanistan, the Taliban says he is not — is now firmly on the international record, and it will be difficult for either side to ignore.
For India, the case is also about the victims of the attacks linked to Azhar's organisation. The Parliament attack, Pathankot and Pulwama remain searing memories in Indian public life, and successive Indian governments have argued that justice for those attacks requires action against the man who founded the group responsible.
The FATF plenary offers a forum where that argument can be made not just as a bilateral grievance but as a question of global financial integrity: whether a designated terrorist can continue to operate, raise funds and evade arrest while the country accused of sheltering him claims he is somewhere else entirely.
(Reporting based on News18 and Moneycontrol.)