New Delhi: India’s Operation Sindoor did not just avenge the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, but also delivered long-overdue justice to the family of American journalist Daniel Pearl who was brutally murdered in 2002.
The South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, Pearl was abducted in Karachi on January 23, 2002 while investigating terror links in Pakistan.
A month later, it emerged through a chilling video that he had been beheaded.
After more than two decades, Pearl’s family can feel a sense of justice after the Indian Armed Forces carried out precision strikes at nine terror camps across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the early hours of May 7.
One of the targeted sites was in Bahawalpur, known to be the headquarters of deadly terror group Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM).
Ten family members of the notorious Masood Azhar, including his younger brother Abdul Rauf Azhar, were killed by India’s missile attack.
Rauf, the operational head of Jaish ever since Masood has taken a backseat due to ill health, was a leading figure in the global terrorism circuit. He was among the masterminds of not only the 1999 IC-814 hijacking, but was also indirectly involved in the killing of Pearl.
In orchestrating the 1999 Kandahar hijack incident, Rauf negotiated hard with the Indian government to facilitate the release of Omar Saeed Sheikh, a key Al-Qaeda operative who was part of the group which actually kidnapped and eliminated Pearl.
Even India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, during Friday’s press briefing, alluded to the role of Jaish behind the beheading of Daniel Pearl.
“JeM was in some way, directly or indirectly, responsible for the death of Daniel Pearl… The attack on Bahawalpur, on that facility of Jaish-e-Mohammed in Bahawalpur, is, I would imagine, a fitting part of this unfortunate incident,” said Misri.
