NEW DELHI: Days after Pakistan senator Sardar Ayaz Sadiq's statement about handing over of Abhinandan Varthaman to India under "pressure", posters featuring the PML-N leader with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and IAF pilot appeared in Lahore.
The banners and posters called Sadiq a "traitor" and "Modi's friend".
The posters in Lahore came up after the PML-N leader while speaking in the national assembly last week said that Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa's "legs were shaking" as foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said during a meeting that if IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was not released, India would attack Pakistan.
The pictures of these posters, that went viral on social media, came up near Sadiq’s constituency in Lahore.
In some posters, the PML-N leader's face was morphed to look like IAF pilot Abhinandan. The poster showed Sadiq in Abhinandan's getup which read: "Mir Sadiq, Mir Jaffar… Ayaz Sadiq."
Sadiq's statement was criticised by ruling party ministers and also prompted the Inter-Services Public Relations chief Major General Babar Iftikhar to hold a presser in which he sought to "correct the record" regarding the events.
The 37-year-old IAF pilot was captured by the Pakistani Army on February 27 after his MiG-21 Bison jet was shot down in a dogfight with Pakistani jets during aerial combat.
In the early hours of February 26, 2019, the IAF jets bombed the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror camps in Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan and avenged the Pulwama terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 40 CRPF personnel.
Before his jet was hit, Abhinandan downed an F-16 fighter of Pakistan. He was released on the night of March 1 by Pakistan.