India, having sent its message with Tuesday’s air strike, should now refrain from any escalation and tread carefully keeping all diplomatic channels open as a pilot of the Indian Air Force (IAF) was in Pakistan’s custody and bringing him back was among the top priorities, former IAF officers said yesterday.
After an aerial engagement in Jammu and Kashmir’s Nowshera sector yesterday, in which the IAF shot down an F-16 of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), Pakistan said that it has captured one Indian pilot, who was identified as Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, a MiG 21 Bison pilot.
The Indian government has acknowledged that Varthaman has been captured and said it expects his immediate and safe return.
“India should keep all the diplomatic channels open. The situation would not have gone this bad had there been a dialogue. These politicians think they can eradicate terrorism. Even the US has been trying to do the same since the 9/11 attacks, but it has not been able to do so,” retired Air Marshal Ashok Goel said.
“We need to tread very carefully and judiciously now. We don’t know what kind of harm Pakistan may cause to the captured officer. There should not be an escalation from our side at least. The priority should be to get our man back,” he said.
Another former Air Marshal advised India to try to get the captured officer back with both the parties having achieved their objectives.
“India achieved its aim by destroying their terror camp. Pakistan also saved its face by doing some sort of attack in which both nations lost an aircraft each. Unfortunately, one of our men was captured. We should make all efforts to retrieve our pilot,” former IAF chief P V Naik said.
Former Air Marshal M Matheswaran said that while bringing back the pilot should be the priority, India must extort some action from Pakistan before it fully engages in a dialogue.
“Of course, we must bring him back... But it’s something that happens in an escalation. Our plane drifted into their territory and got captured... it is part of the conflict situation. We have to deal with it,” he said.
The already strained relations between India and Pakistan have been tested since Tuesday when the IAF, retaliating against the Pulwama terror attack that killed 40 paratroopers, bombed the biggest training camp of Jaish-e-Mohamed at Balakot in Pakistan. 
Meanwhile, the parents of the captured wing commander were engulfed by gloom.
When IANS contacted his father, retired Air Marshal Simhakutty Varthaman on phone, he declined to speak. The distressed family lives in Chennai.
Like his father, Abhinandan chose the IAF and was commissioned into service in 2004.
His father was once the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Air Command.