After 20 Years IC-814 Victim Rupin Katyal Gets Justice, Hijacker Ibrahim Killed In Pakistan

Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim, aka Jamali, known for hijacking IC-814, has been bought to an end as a bullet pierced him off in Karachi, Pakistan, by unidentified gunmen on March 1. With this, the family of victim Rupin Katyal got served with justice after two decades of havocing the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814.

With Ibrahim's death, only two of the five Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) hijackers remain alive in Pakistan, including Ibrahim Azhar, the elder brother of Masood Azhar, and Rauf Asghar, the group's two kingpins.

Rupin Katyal & His Wife's Barbaric Murder

Rupin Katyal, 25, was brutally slaughtered by Ibrahim on December 25, 1999, with a sharp instrument, and his body was recovered from the hijacked plane in the UAE. On that fateful day, he and his wife returned to Delhi from their honeymoon in Kathmandu, reported Hindustan Times.

Some Hijackers Are Still Alive

As per counter-terrorism experts, only Ibrahim Azhar and Shahid Akhtar Sayed are still alive in Pakistan. The latter moves away from Karachi to the relative safety of Pakistan's lawless Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region.

While one of the hijackers died naturally, it is believed that Indian security forces killed another during the December 13, 2001, attack on Parliament by the same Sunni jihadist group with Deobandi ideology.

Senior leaders of the JeM group, headquartered in Bahawalpur in Pakistan's Punjab province, have attended Zahoor Mistry's funeral. Masood Azhar, Omar Saeed Sheik, both members of the Harkat-ul-Ansar group at the time, and Kashmiri terrorist Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar were released by the Indian government on December 31, 1999, in Kandahar, under the watchful eye of the then-Taliban terror regime. Azhar was released and met with then-Taliban chief Mullah Omar before crossing into Pakistan via the Spin Boldak crossing in Quetta.

Jaish-e-Mohammed History

Masood Azhar formed the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group upon his return to Pakistan and immediately wreaked vengeance by attacking the Srinagar secretariat in October 2001 and the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. He also attempted fidayeen, or suicide attack, on the Ram Janmabhoomi temple in 2005, but the attack failed, resulting in a massive communal conflagration in Uttar Pradesh.

It is worth recalling that the entire West, including its media, advised India to exercise military restraint in the aftermath of the IC 814 hijacking and Parliament attack without sanctioning Pakistan for carrying out these terror attacks.

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