Masood Azhar not in our custody, says Pak

Islamabad: Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar is not in the custody of the Pakistan government, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Thursday."Maulana Masood Azhar is wanted by the government of Pakistan, but he is not in our custody and he is at large," Qureshi told state-run APP news agency.He said Pakistan has taken "enough steps" to arrest culprits involved in terrorist activities.Qureshi's remarks came about a week after Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar told a TV channel that Azhar had been detained by Pakistani authorities.In a demarche issued after the Mumbai terror attacks, India had asked Pakistan to hand over Azhar and underworld dons Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim.Pakistan has said it intends to take action against all terror suspects according to the country's laws and will not hand them over to India.Azhar and two other terrorists were freed by India in exchange for the passengers of an Indian Airlines flight that was hijacked from Kathmandu to Kandahar in December 1999. Azhar formed the Jaish-e-Mohammed soon after his release.Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Shahid Malik also said today that JeM chief Azhar was not under house arrest and his whereabouts were not known to the country's authorities."We are looking for him. He is not under house arrest. As far as I know, it (news reports of Azhar's house arrest) is wrong. He is not in Pakistan... We don't know where he is," Malik told Karan Thapar in 'India Tonight' programme of CNBC-TV18.