1999 Indian Airlines flight hijacker killed in Pakistan

New Delhi: Zahoor Mistry, one of the hijackers of the Indian Airlines IC 814 flight in 1999, has been reportedly killed in Pakistan, The Indian Express reported citing media reports.

According to reports, Mistry got killed by two people on a bike in Karachi's Akhtar Colony on March 1. The Pakistan newsagency Geo TV confirmed his death, describing him as a "business" man. He lived in Karachi on a pseudo-identity, Zahid Akhund, and ran the furniture business Crescent Furniture.

Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar's brother Rauf Asghar and other members of the terror group attended the funeral, local media reports suggested. They also brought CCTV footage showing the assaulters in the area ahead of the murder.

It was on December 24, 1999, the Indian Airlines flight got hijacked while it was flying to New Delhi's IGI Airport from Tribhuvan International Airport of Nepal. Five people were the assaulters, including Mistry, Rauf Asghar and Azhar's elder brother Ibrahim Azhar.

Mistry had killed one of the 180 passengers and crew while flying over Lucknow and took the plane to Amritsar for refuelling. The flight was taken to Lahore, but Pakistan denied permission and was later taken to Kandahar, where the Afghan's then Taliban regime worked for negotiations to release passengers.

After a week of hijacking, negotiations ended as India released Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, all affiliated to terror group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. After their handover to the Taliban, the three moved to Pakistan. After that, Azhar had planned more than one attack in Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of India. These include the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack and the 2019 Pulwama attack. The latter had taken 40 CRPF soldiers' life.