Zahoor Mistry alias Zahid Akhund, one of the terrorists who hijacked the Air India plane, IC-814, in 1999, has been killed in Karachi, Pakistan. He was reportedly killed in his house in an attack by two bike-borne assailants on March 1.
Zahoor was allegedly associated with terror outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad. He was hiding by posing as a businessman.
The two assailants were caught on CCTV camera but could not be identified as they were wearing masks. Sources said that both the bike riders carried out the hit job after conducting recce in the area.
According to sources, Pakistani intelligence agency ISI was also caught off guard by the attack.
The hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight in 1999 was plotted to get terrorists — Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of defunct terror group Al Umar Mujahideen, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, and British-born al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh — released from Indian prisons.
The hijackers kept the 176 passengers of the IC-814 aircraft hostage for seven days. The flight took off from Kathmandu and was headed to Delhi but was hijacked and taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
