India’s ruling BJP party announced on Thursday that Abdul Rauf Azhar had been “excluded” in the recent “Operation Sindhor” airstrikes targeting Pakistan.
Rauf Azhar was the younger sibling of Masood Azhar, the founder of the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). Masood Azhar survived these airstrikes but reported that 10 family members were killed, initially claiming Rauf was a casualty.
JeM was established in Pakistan, with Masood Azhar, now 56, having been released from Indian prison on terrorism charges. He previously held a significant position in a different Pakistani militant organization, Harakat-ul-Mujahideen.
There were certain actions linked to Rauf Azhar, as he was apprehended by Indian authorities while attempting to enter Jammu and Kashmir—an area currently fraught with tension between India and Pakistan—using fake passports.
Harakat-ul-Mujahideen had previously leveraged a hijacking of an Indian plane to secure the release of Azhar and two others. Rauf Azhar was identified by India as one of the key figures behind that hijacking.
Following a brief leadership conflict within his original group, Azhar established JeM, which gained notoriety for numerous violent attacks across India, Pakistan, Kashmir, and beyond.
JeM has connections with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, having reportedly formed an alliance with the Taliban in 2008 to assist in assaults against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. The aircraft hijacked in 1999 was under Taliban control and aimed at securing Masood Azhar’s freedom.
Although Pakistan officially banned JeM in 2002, India has long accused the Pakistani government of permitting the group to operate freely. Tensions heightened when Masood Azhar appeared at an Islamic school in Bahawalpur in November 2024, delivering a public speech where he vowed to persist in his terror campaigns against India. The Bahawalpur headquarters of JeM was among the targets hit during the recent airstrikes.
China, as a partner to Pakistan, intervened to shield JeM through diplomatic means, blocking U.S. and Indian efforts to impose sanctions on Rauf Azhar in 2022.
Daniel Pearl is one of the many atrocities linked to JeM. The Wall Street Journal reporter was abducted in Karachi, Pakistan, in January 2002 while investigating Islamic terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. He had traveled from India to Pakistan for this purpose.
Abdul Rauf Azhar was involved in a group called “The National Movement to Restore Pakistan’s Sovereignty,” which falsely accused Pearl of being an Israeli spy. They sent a list of demands to the U.S. for his release, and when those demands were unmet, they forced Pearl to record a video claiming to be a “Jewish American” before brutally killing him.
The terrorists publicized the video titled “The Jewish Journalist Massacre, Daniel Pearl.” Pearl’s body was later found in a shallow grave outside Karachi.
This case shocked both Pearl’s family and the U.S. government, especially when, in 2021, the Pakistani Supreme Court ordered the release of one of the main suspects, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. A lower court had ruled Sheikh’s time served was sufficient, not due to a lack of evidence in Pearl’s murder, but merely because it deemed his sentence adequate.
Rauf Azhar became the operational head of JeM in 2007, as his brother sought to keep him low-profile. He was designated a global terrorist by the U.S. Treasury in December 2010 and was accused of recruiting and orchestrating attacks against targets in India and Afghanistan.
