ROUGH CUT.

NO REPORTER NARRATION.

Pakistan handed a captured Indian pilot back to his country on Friday (March 1) as the nuclear-armed neighbors scaled back a confrontation that has prompted world powers to urge restraint.

Television footage showed Wing Commander Abhinandan walking across the border near the town of Wagah just before 9.00 p.m.

(1600 GMT).

Indian officials confirmed he had been returned and said he would be taken for medical checks.

Abhinandan's MiG-21 jet was shot down by a Pakistani fighter during an aerial clash over the disputed Kashmir region on Wednesday as two weeks of growing tensions between the two countries erupted into open hostilities.

The plane crashed on the Pakistani side of the de facto border that separates the two sides of Kashmir, a Himalayan region that has been a source of hostility between the two countries ever since independence from Britain in 1947.