Indian strike kills Masood Azhar's brother Abdul Rauf Azhar, mastermind of IC-814 hijacking

Abdul Rauf Azhar was killed in Indian airstrikes under Operation Sindoor in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

India’s “Operation Sindoor,” has led to the death of Abdul Rauf Azhar, the younger brother of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar.

“Among those reported eliminated is Abdul Rauf Azhar — operational head of Jaishe-Mohammad, mastermind of the IC-814 hijacking, and a central figure in international jihadist networks," officials told News18.

The BJP put out a social media post with Abdul Rauf Azhar's photo and "eliminated" written on it.

- - - #OperationSindoorpic.twitter.com/NKuRwptldH

BJP (@BJP4India) May 8, 2025

Azhar, who is also JeM’s second-in-command, was undergoing treatment at a Pakistani military hospital and succumbed to his injuries, reports said.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, India launched a military operation targeting terrorist infrastructure across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK). The operation involved the deployment of air, naval, and land-based assets. It is the most expansive cross-border precision strike carried out by India since the Balakot operation in 2019.

The mission was a response to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, where 26 civilians.

Who is Abdul Rauf Azhar?

Abdul the key mind behind the hijacking  of the Indian Airlines plane IC-814 in December 1999. It was  en route from Kathmandu to Delhi. The flight was hijacked by five terrorists of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and taken to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Masood Azhar had to be released as part of the swap of passengers on the aircraft.

“Rauf Azhar’s role in orchestrating the IC-814 hijacking directly facilitated the release of Omar Saeed Sheikh, a key Al-Qaeda operative who went on to kidnap and murder Daniel Pearl, an American-Jewish journalist with the Wall Street Journal. Pearl’s brutal execution in 2002 shocked the conscience of the world and remains a defining example of the global threat posed by state-protected terror networks," officials told News18.

He was designated as a terrorist by the United States Treasury on December 2, 2010. The US treasury department cited his involvement in “recruiting operatives and planning attacks in India and Afghanistan," and categorised him as a global threat.

India pushed to have Abdul blacklisted by the United Nations Security Council’s 1267 Sanctions Committee in 2022, but the move was blocked by China, citing the need for “further evidence".

A statement attributed to Masood Azhar had said on Wednesday  that 10 members of his family and four of his aides were killed when India targeted Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters, Jamia Masjid Subhan Allah, in Bahawalpur.

"Ten members of my family were blessed with this happiness together tonight... five are innocent children, my elder sister, her honorable husband. My scholar Fazil bhanje (nephew) and his wife and my beloved scholar Fazilah (niece) ... my dear brother Huzaifah and his mother. Two more dear companions," the statement said.