Fatima Bhutto, author and granddaughter of former Pakistan prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, has said the Imran Khan government should release the Indian Air Force pilot it claims to have captured after an air combat on Wednesday.

Without naming the officer, India has acknowledged that one of its IAF pilots is “missing in action”, and has demanded his “immediate and safe return”, while protesting “vulgar display” of the injured soldier by Pakistan “in violation of all norms of International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Convention“.

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A video released by Pakistan shows the captured fighter pilot introducing himself as “Wing Commander Abhinandan”.

Pilot Abhinandan Varthaman was captured on Wednesday after he ejected safely from his MiG 21 Bison aircraft but landed across the Line of Control after a fierce engagement in the air between the air forces of the two sides. He was subsequently taken into custody by the Pakistani army.

“Pakistan must maintain this profoundly moral stand. It would be an important gesture to release the captured Indian airforce pilot. Our commitment at this moment must be to peace and humanity,” Fatima Bhutto, who is also a niece of Pakistan’s former PM Benazir Bhutto, said on Twitter.

Pakistan must maintain this profoundly moral stand. It would be an important gesture to release the captured Indian airforce pilot. Our commitment at this moment must be to peace and humanity.

— fatima bhutto (@fbhutto) February 27, 2019

The 36-year-old also wrote an op-ed for New York Times, advocating the release of the India pilot. “I and many other young Pakistanis have called upon our country to release the captured Indian pilot as a gesture of our commitment to peace, humanity and dignity.”

READ | Wg Cdr Abhinandan Varthaman was consultant for Mani Ratnam film about IAF pilot captured in Pak

Bhutto added: “We have spent a lifetime at war. I do not want to see Pakistani soldiers die. I do not want to see Indian soldiers die. We cannot be a subcontinent of orphans.”

She wrote her generation of Pakistanis had fought for the right to speak, and “we are not afraid to lend our voices to that most righteous cause: peace”.

Fatima is the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, son of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

She said Pakistan’s recent history was bloody and no one had suffered more violence than its own citizens.

“But our long history with military dictatorships and experience of terrorism and uncertainty means that my generation of Pakistanis have no tolerance, no appetite, for jingoism or war,” she said.

Bhutto said like her, a large section of the population was against the escalation of tensions. “I have never seen my country at peace with its neighbour. But never before have I seen a war played out between two nuclear-armed states with Twitter accounts.”

Supporting Pakistan PM Imran Khan’s statement, she posted on Twitter: “As critical as I have long been of PM Khan, this is the only moral stance to take. We do not want war. We don’t want more violence to hurt either Pakistanis or Indians.”

With India-Pakistan tensions escalating, hashtag #saynotowar started trend in Pakistan on Twitter, and soon became number 1 trend worldwide on the micro-blogging site.

The tensions between the two neighbours started rising after the February 14 Pulwama terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir in which 44 CRPF troopers were killed. Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror group had claimed responsibility for the attack. In less than a fortnight, India bombed and destroyed JeM’s biggest training camp in Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, about 80 km from the Line of Control, and claimed to have killed a “very large number” of terrorists, trainers and senior commanders.

On Wednesday, Pakistan claimed that it shot down two Indian fighter jets over Pakistani air space and captured the pilot.