26/11 plotter Sajjid Mir lives under ‘highest level of ISI protection’ in Pakistan

While the Indian intelligence has kept track of Mir, the terrorist has level seven protection, which is normally given to heads of state by the ISI in Pakistan. He underwent plastic surgery after the 26/11 attacks.

Updated on: Jun 28, 2020, 15:33:08 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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In its annual Country Reports on Terrorism, the United States has accused Islamabad of not prosecuting 2019 Pulwama attack Jaish-e-Mohammed mastermind Masood Azhar and 26/11 Mumbai attack master planner Sajjid Mir aka Majid despite their “widely believed” presence in Pakistan.

A combination photo of Sajjid Mir shows the terrorist after undergoing plastic surgery (left) post-26/11 and before the procedure (right). (HT Photo)

While the Imran Khan government continues to deny the presence of these killers in Pakistan, Mir and Azhar live under highest level of ISI protection that country. Sajjid Mir, the handler of American national David Coleman Headley, lives in Garden Villa Housing Society, Adiala Jail Road, Rawalpindi, Pakistan or 27, C-Block, Al Faisal Town, Lahore or Ganda Nala area of Lahore in Pakistan.

Carrying a reward of US $5 million on his head, 44-year-old Mir was the man who directed the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists to take the head shot at Holtzberg couple at Chabad House in Mumbai during the 26/11 massacre. Responsible for security of LeT’s operations chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi till 2010, Mir was not only responsible for recruiting terrorists abroad and training in terror camps in Pakistan but also was part of the ISI’s Indian Mujahideen operation or what was identified as the Karachi project.

While the Indian intelligence has kept track of Mir, the terrorist has level seven protection, which is normally given to heads of state by the ISI in Pakistan. He underwent plastic surgery after the 26/11 attacks.

Similarly, the architect of the 2016 Pathankot air base and 2019 Pulwama attack, Masood Azhar, lies bed-ridden at JeM headquarters at Markaz-e-Usaman-o-Ali, Railway Link Road, in Bhawalpur in Pakistan’s Punjab province. While Azhar plans the attack against India, the strike is executed by his brother Maulana Rauf Asghar and his team. The veteran terrorist is also known to stay in Madarassa Bilal Habshi, Kotka Imam Shah, Gareha Shah Jahan, P S Mandan, Bannu, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) or Madrassa Masjid-e-Luqman, Lakkitajazai Road, Lakkimarwat, KPK.

While Sajjid Mir was declared a global terrorist in 2012, Masood Azhar was declared a global terrorist on May 1, 2019, after much delay with China blocking his designation by the UNSC 1267 committee four times. Azhar continues to remain active as a terror leader of Pakistan but Sajjid Mir has gone below the radar at the instructions of ISI.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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