10 of Parliament, Pulwama strike mastermind's family killed
NEW DELHI: Maulana
Masood Azhar
's words dripped with grief as the notorious chief of terror group Jaish-e-Muhammed acknowledged the death of 10 of his family members in the Indian attack on
Markaz Subhan Allah
in Bahawalpur, a Deobandi seminary known as the breeding ground of terrorists that Pakistan's ISI deploys as part of its proxy war against India.
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"I wish I had also joined the lucky caravan," Azhar said in the florid Urdu that terrorists use to glorify themselves as martyrs.
In a statement JeM said Azhar's elder sister, her husband, a nephew and his wife and a niece were among those killed. "They have attained a higher calling and have now becomes the guests of Allah. I feel no disappointment. In fact, my heart keeps wishing I had joined this joyful group of 14 pilgrims.
Their departure was destined, yet it was not God who killed them," the notorious terrorist-in-chief said even as he invited the public to attend the funeral prayers scheduled for 4pm on Wednesday.
The statement was in keeping with the ruthless resolve of the terrorist who arrived in India in the 1990s as a member of Harkatul Mujahideen to wage jihad in Jammu & Kashmir. He was arrested but had to be released as part of the swap of passengers of Indian Airlines plane IC-814, which was hijacked by his younger brother Abdul Rauf Azhar and others.
The imprisonment did not dampen his zeal for jihad. He broke away from HuM to launch Jaish-e-Muhammed (Army of the Prophet) and soon earned the backing of ISI which was impressed by his fanatic fervour.
Azhar, the 56-year-old terror mastermind sanctioned by the UN Security Council as a global terrorist, has been linked to several high-profile attacks in India, including the 2001 attack on Parliament , the 2016 assaults on the Pathankot airbase and on the Indian embassy in Kabul and the suicide bombing of a CRPF convoy in 2019, which was the trigger for IAF raids on another Jaish seminary in Balakot.
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For years, Pakistan pretended to be unaware of Azhar's whereabouts despite robust evidence of the terrorist's presence on its territory.
Getting him on the global terrorist list was a challenge. India tried to get Azhar designated as a global terrorist under the UN Sanctions Committee for years, only to to run into roadblocks raised by Pakistan's all-weather ally China who was promised that being on the right side of terrorists would help ensure the safety of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Azhar's core group, including brother Abdul Rauf and other senior functionaries like Azhar's brother-in-law Yusuf Azhar have been operating out of Markaz Subhan Allah. The facility was under the superintendence of Mufti Asghar Khan Kashmiri, head of Jaish's operations in PoK. Abdullah Jehadi alias Abdullah Kashmiri and Aashiq Nengroo (Indian fugitive) also operated from the centre.
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