One of the five men who hijacked an Indian Airlines flight, IC-814, from Kathmandu in December 1999 has been shot dead in Karachi, media reports said.
Zahoor Mistry Ibrahim was living under an assumed identity in Karachi, allegedly under ISI protection.
Media reports said Mistry Ibrahim had stabbed to death Rupin Katyal, an Indian man who was returning on IC-814 after his honeymoon. Katyal was the sole fatality of the IC-814 hijacking. IC-814 was taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan, by the terrorists. The aircraft and passengers were freed on December 31, 1999, after a week in captivity following the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government's decision to release three jailed terrorists.
One of the released terrorists was Masood Azhar, who went on to form the Jaish-e-Mohammed.
“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,” The Times of India reported.
The Times of India reported Ibrahim was killed on March 1 by two gunmen near a furniture shop he ran in Karachi's Akhtar Colony. He was shot twice in the head.
According to reports, the funeral of Mistry Ibrahim was attended by senior leaders of the Jaish.
Only two of the five IC-814 hijackers are believed to be alive. “According to counter-terrorism experts, only Ibrahim Azhar and Shahid Akhtar Sayed are alive in Pakistan with the latter moving away from Karachi to relative protection of lawless Khyber Paktunkhwa area of Pakistan. It is understood that while one of the hijackers died due to natural causes, another was killed by Indian security forces during the December 13, 2001, attack on Parliament,” Hindustan Times reported.
