Haveri: Stepping up attack on the Narendra Modi government over the Pulwama terror attack, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday asked the Prime Minister to explain to the nation why the then NDA dispensation had released Jaish-e Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar from Indian jail.

It was the JeM that claimed to have carried out the Pulwama attack that resulted in the death of 40 CRPF jawans.

Recalling the release of Azhar by the Vajpayee government in 1999 in exchange for passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane, Rahul said PM Modi should tell the country "how Masood Azhar was sent back (to Pakistan), who sent and which government sent him (back)".

"Some days ago CRPF people were killed in Pulwama. I have a small question to the prime minister. Who killed these CRPF jawans? What is the name of the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed?...Masood Azhar," Gandhi said at a rally here in north Karnataka, where he sounded the party's bugle for the Lok Sabha polls.

The Congress chief said, "Modiji make me understand who sent Masood Azhar from India's jail to Pakistan. Didn't the BJP government send this person from India's jail to Pakistan?

"Didn't you send (then Union minister) Jaswant Singh and your National Security Advisor (Ajit Doval) on the same flight? Did you forget that your (party's) government sent this person from India's jail to Kandahar(in Afghanistan)?"

"Why are you not speaking about it in your speeches? Why are you not saying that the person who carried out the bomb blast on CRPF, who killed CRPF jawans was sent back to Pakistan by the BJP government?" Gandhi asked.

He told the crowd, "Go to the internet, you can see the photo of Ajit Doval who is the National Security Advisor of Narendra Modi along with Masood Azhar at Kandahar airport."

Rahul’s attack on the Modi government on national security comes amid an escalating war of words between the BJP and the Congress over India's air strikes on terror camps in Pakistan after the Pulwama attack.

The two parties have been accusing each other of politicising the issue.

In a fierce attack on the opposition, Modi had called them "poster boys of Pakistan" for seeking proof of the IAF's action on a terror camp in Balakot in Pakistan and asked them to stop appeasing Pakistan.