NIA attaches property of IC-814 hijacking accomplice Mushtaq 'Latram'
The NIA has attached Srinagar property of Mushtaq Zargar alias Latram, who was released in exchange of IC-814 hostages in 1999 along with Harkat-ul-Ansar terrorists Masood Azhar, who later formed Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Omar Sayeed Sheikh, who killed journalist Daniel Pearl.
In a major offensive against terrorists operating from Pakistan soil, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has attached the Srinagar-based property of Mushtaq Zargar aka Latram, the founder and chief commander of Al-Umar Mujahideen, who was released along with Masood Azhar, the Bahawalpur based Jaish-e-Mohammed chief, in exchange of passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight 814 (IC 814) at Kandahar in1999. Zargar was also involved in the kidnapping of former union Home Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s daughter, Rubaiya Sayeed, sister of former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, in 1989.
File photo of 1999 IC 814 hijacking to Kandahar by Pakistan based terror groups.
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According to an NIA spokesperson, Zargar’s two Marlas house (Khasra No. 182) at Ganai Mohalla, Jamia Masjid, Nowhatta, Srinagar, has been attached under the provisions of UA(P)A. Zargar is a ‘Designated Individual Terrorist’ under the UA(P) Act and has been operating from Pakistan ever since his release and has been funding terror activities in the valley.
Zargar was earlier associated with Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front and was responsible for several terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir. He has also been involved in other heinous crimes, including murders, and has a close association with other terror outfits such,as Al-Qaeda and JeM.
The spokesperson said Zargar was designated a terrorist by the union government under the Fourth Schedule of UAPA. He grew up in the Nowhatta area of Srinagar and joined JKLF. In 1989 he was one of the members who kidnapped Rubaiya Sayeed, and negotiated her release in exchange for five terrorists.
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He was arrested on May 15, 1992 and and was released from jail on December 31, 1999, as part of the Indian Airlines Flight 814 hostage exchange deal along with Harkat-ul-Ansar terrorist Omar Sayeed Sheikh, who was later arrested in Pakistan in 2002 for brutal murder Daniel Pearl.
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He was arrested on May 15, 1992 and and was released from jail on December 31, 1999, as part of the Indian Airlines Flight 814 hostage exchange deal along with Harkat-ul-Ansar terrorist Omar Sayeed Sheikh, who was later arrested in Pakistan in 2002 for brutal murder Daniel Pearl.
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While both Masood Azhar and Omar Sayeed were hardcore terrorists of then Harkat-ul-Ansar group, the hijackers for Mushtaq Zargar released to show support for the Kashmir issue. Today, Zargar is active again, Sheikh is in Pakistani jail and Masood Azhar is in JeM main seminary in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.
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.
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