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NEW DELHI: Zahoor Mistry Ibrahim, considered the most brutal among the five Indian Airlines flight IC-814 hijackers, was shot dead by two unidentified gunmen in Pakistan’s Karachi on March 1. Ibrahim, a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist, was living with an assumed identity of Zahid Akhund, under the ISI’s protection.
Sources said Ibrahim was the terrorist codenamed ‘doctor’ who was wielding an improvised knife with which he had stabbed a passenger named Rupin Katyal inside the hijacked flight, leaving him to bleed to death. Mistry had been lying low for several years, running a shop named Crescent Furniture in Karachi’s Akhtar Colony. The two masked gunmen were caught on CCTV cameras. The footage shows two men on a bike in the lane heading towards the shop. As per local media reports, Ibrahim was shot twice in the head from point blank range by the gunmen who had also carried a reccee of the area before committing the murder, catching the ISI’s officials by surprise.
The murder was strangely kept under wraps and largely ignored by the local media in Pakistan. One of the channels ran the news as the “killing of a businessman” without giving any details. The news was confirmed after JeM’s operations chief Rauf Ashgar — the brother of ailing JeM founder Masood Azhar — and other top terrorists of the organisation were spotted at the funeral. Rauf was also among the five hijackers. The Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Delhi with 179 passengers, including 24 foreigners and 11 crew members, was hijacked by five ISI-trained terrorists on December 24, 1999.
The hijackers has taken control of the flight within an hour of take-off and forced the plane to hault at Amritsar, Lahore and the UAE for refuelling, before landing at Kandahar in Afghanistan, which was controlled by the Taliban at the time.
After several rounds of negotiations, the government gave in to the demands of the terrorists and released three jailed terrorists. Apart from Masood Azhar, two other hardcore terrorists — Syed Omar Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar — were released in exchange for passengers.
The CBI had filed an FIR in January 2000, naming 10 suspects and filed a chargesheet six months later against Yusuf Nepali, Abdul Momin and Dilip Bhujel for being part of the conspiracy. A year later, the court framed charges but the trial concluded after seven years holding the trio guilty. Apart from these three, seven others, including the five hijackers (all Pakistanis), were named in the FIR as absconding. Passengers told CBI that the hijackers referred to each other with codenames. While the ones named ‘Burger’ and ‘Chief’ were holding a pistol and a hand grenade each, the doctor, aka Zahoor Mistry, was holding the knife.
With Ibrahim dead, at least two of the hijackers — Ibrahim Azhar and Rauf — are still alive. One of the hijackers died of multiple diseases while the other came to India again for a second operation and was killed in the Parliament attack in 2001.
Sources said Ibrahim was the terrorist codenamed ‘doctor’ who was wielding an improvised knife with which he had stabbed a passenger named Rupin Katyal inside the hijacked flight, leaving him to bleed to death. Mistry had been lying low for several years, running a shop named Crescent Furniture in Karachi’s Akhtar Colony. The two masked gunmen were caught on CCTV cameras. The footage shows two men on a bike in the lane heading towards the shop. As per local media reports, Ibrahim was shot twice in the head from point blank range by the gunmen who had also carried a reccee of the area before committing the murder, catching the ISI’s officials by surprise.
The murder was strangely kept under wraps and largely ignored by the local media in Pakistan. One of the channels ran the news as the “killing of a businessman” without giving any details. The news was confirmed after JeM’s operations chief Rauf Ashgar — the brother of ailing JeM founder Masood Azhar — and other top terrorists of the organisation were spotted at the funeral. Rauf was also among the five hijackers. The Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Delhi with 179 passengers, including 24 foreigners and 11 crew members, was hijacked by five ISI-trained terrorists on December 24, 1999.
The hijackers has taken control of the flight within an hour of take-off and forced the plane to hault at Amritsar, Lahore and the UAE for refuelling, before landing at Kandahar in Afghanistan, which was controlled by the Taliban at the time.
After several rounds of negotiations, the government gave in to the demands of the terrorists and released three jailed terrorists. Apart from Masood Azhar, two other hardcore terrorists — Syed Omar Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar — were released in exchange for passengers.
The CBI had filed an FIR in January 2000, naming 10 suspects and filed a chargesheet six months later against Yusuf Nepali, Abdul Momin and Dilip Bhujel for being part of the conspiracy. A year later, the court framed charges but the trial concluded after seven years holding the trio guilty. Apart from these three, seven others, including the five hijackers (all Pakistanis), were named in the FIR as absconding. Passengers told CBI that the hijackers referred to each other with codenames. While the ones named ‘Burger’ and ‘Chief’ were holding a pistol and a hand grenade each, the doctor, aka Zahoor Mistry, was holding the knife.
With Ibrahim dead, at least two of the hijackers — Ibrahim Azhar and Rauf — are still alive. One of the hijackers died of multiple diseases while the other came to India again for a second operation and was killed in the Parliament attack in 2001.
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