Pakistan released the Indian pilot that he had captured after shooting down his plane in Kashmir

Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, pilot of the Indian Air Force Mig-21, shot dead Wednesday in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, was released this Friday. The Pakistani authorities, who kept him captured, handed him over to his Indian counterparts via the border town of Wagah, in the state of Lahore.

Varthaman ejected after the impact hit by his plane and parachuted to the area claimed by both countries for decades. Pakistani soldiers prevented civilians from lynching him and took him away.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had announced Thursday that he would published as a "peace gesture", in the midst of escalating tensions with India reaching unprecedented levels of violence since the 1999 war.

On Wednesday, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said thatu country was planning to repatriate the pilot if that meant reducing tensionssaid the agency ANI.

India, for its part, responded that the pilot's situation "This was not open to negotiations" and that it should be delivered "immediately".

Tensions between India and Pakistan began on February 14 when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Indian Kashmir, killing 41 soldiersin an attack that New Delhi attributed to Islamabad.

Tuesday, India launched an aerial bombardment of an alleged terrorist camp in the territory of Pakistan, which motivated an air force response from this country.

The videos went around the world and put conflict at the center of the pilot's situation, to the point that the Ministry of Electronics and Technology and Information of India asked the YouTube social network to unregister 11 links in which they could be seen, according to the newspaper The times of India.