A new audio recording purportedly featuring Maulana Masood Azhar, the elusive chief of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), has surfaced on social media, boasting that his organisation now commands “thousands” of suicide bombers who are prepared for immediate deployment. The clip has surfaced at a time when Pahalgam attack mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba deputy chief Saifullah Kasuri was captured on video claiming that the Pakistani army had invited him to lead the funeral prayers of its soldiers after Operation Sindoor – conducted by India in May last year following the terror attack in J&K. Both clips were posted on Telegram and X by pro-ISI accounts.
The messages are being viewed as a desperate propaganda attempt to revitalize a group reeling from devastating losses inflicted by the Indian armed forces during the operation. Kasoori’s speech was made from a school with hundreds of children visible in the audience while Azhar too is seemingly addressing a public gathering, sources said. In another video, Kasuri has also welcomed the growing diplomatic and military ties between Pakistan and Bangladesh. The latest recording features a defiant Azhar claiming that the sheer number of his followers would “cause an uproar in the global media” if fully revealed. Azhar said new recruits are driven by the obsession of attaining “martyrdom”.Def experts: Azhar’s statement sign of post-Sindoor frustration Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) Masood Azhar asserts that these recruits are driven by a fanatical obsession with “martyrdom”, explicitly stating that they do not seek material comforts like cars, motorcycles or foreign visas. “They only ask Allah for one thing: martyrdom,” the UN-designated terrorist claimed, attempting to project a picture of high morale and spiritual conviction among his cadre. However, defence experts suggested this was little more than a “hollow threat” and a sign of severe frustration arising out of Operation Sindoor, a series of precision strikes by India in May 2025 that decimated JeM’s infrastructure and eliminated at least 10 of Azhar’s close relatives and top aides in Bahawalpur. “This audio appears to be a calculated effort to save face after the group’s leadership was ‘torn to pieces’, as recently admitted by other JeM commanders,” said a source. Interestingly, Azhar has not been seen in public since a 2019 blast at his Bahawalpur hideout, leading to persistent rumours about his health and location. This latest audio, while lacking visual proof of his life, indicates that the terror mastermind is still attempting to operate from the shadows, deep within a safe haven in Pakistan. Security agencies are now closely analysing voice samples and metadata of the clip to track its origin and assess the current threat level posed by the group’s surviving sleeper cells, sources said.
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