Rauf Asghar, the brother of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar, organised, planned and executed the IC-814 hijacking in December 1999 that finally ended after the Vajpayee government agreed to release his brother Masood Azhar and two other major terrorists, India and the U.S. said in their joint proposal to the UN Security Council, that detailed a number of attacks Asghar masterminded, from the Parliament attack to Pulwama bombing.
Government sources said China’s hold came despite the fact that India and the U.S. had provided “incontrovertible evidence” against Rauf Asghar for the terror listing.
As co-sponsors, India and the U.S. had filed the proposal with the UNSC’s 1267 committee at the end of July under what is called a “no-objection” procedure. Officials said they hoped that the listing would go through without objections in the final meeting on August 10, given that Rauf Asghar is on both India and the U.S.’s own terror lists and he has also been convicted in Pakistan on terror-related charges.
Rauf Asghar, whose age is listed as 45 or 48, is identified with four known addresses in Pakistan’s Bahawalpur and Karachi. As deputy chief of the JeM, and financial and administrative head, he is in-charge of all the group’s terror activities, reporting only to Masood Azhar. Asghar was a member of the JeM's Shura or General Council as well as on the Qaima - standing committee.
Also read: Designation failure: The Hindu Editorial on China’s decision to block terror tag for Lashkar leader
‘De-facto head’
When Masood Azhar was sent to an undisclosed location by the Pakistani authorities after the Parliament attack in India in 2001, and an assassination attempt on then President Musharraf in Pakistan in 2003, Rauf Asghar had assumed as "de-facto" head of the JeM, said the submission.
One Indian hostage was killed during the IC 814 hijacking. While Azhar went on to found the Jaish-e-Mohammad (also called the Jaish-i-Mohammad or JiM) along with Rauf Asghar, Omar Saeed was convicted for the killing of American journalist Danny Pearl and Mushtaq Zargar, who founded the Al-Mujahideen, is responsible for a number of terror strikes in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Jaish-e-Mohammad was designated a terrorist organisation in 2001 and Masood Azhar was only designated in 2019. However Rauf Asghar, who is also wanted for the Parliament attack in December 2001, and at least eight major attacks on army camps in Jammu and Kashmir between 2014 and 2019, up until the Pulwama attack of February 2019, has not so far been designated.
