Masood Azhar, the chief of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed and responsible for the death of scores of innocent people and security personnel in the past two decades, had dropped out of his first jihadi training school. He was mocked for being overweight and also for failing to compete with other recruits.

After completing his education in Islamic studies at a Karachi madrasa, Masood Azhar had gone to a jihadi training camp in Afghanistan. He related his experience to his Indian interrogators when he was arrested in Jammu and Kashmir in 1994.

Masood Azhar told the interrogators that he was mocked and jeered at during training due to his short and plump stature. He could not cross the trenches filled with water. His could not aim his gun properly at the target. His peers made fun of him calling him motu (fat boy). Masood Azhar dropped out of the mandatory 40-day training programme and was sent back to his Karachi seminary.

Journey of a terrorist

Masood Azhar had come to India following a fundraising world tour for the Harkat-ul Mujahideen (HuM), a terror group active then in Afghanistan. He had stayed in Delhi, Lucknow and Ayodhya, where he also visited the site where Babri Masjid stood till its demolition by kar sevaks in December 1992.

He went to Srinagar as part of his India tour aimed at finding recruits for jihad. On his way to the Jama Masjid for a Friday lecture, Masood Azhar’s car broke down. He and his associate hired an auto-rickshaw. They were intercepted and arrested by the police.

In custody of the security forces, Masood Azhar told the interrogators that he was born in Pakistan’s Bahawalpur and his father was the principal of a government school. When he was in his teens, a cleric friend of his father advised him to send Masood Azhar to the Jamia Uloom ul Islamia in Karachi.

This is where his journey as a jihadi-terrorist began. He came in contact with the members of terror outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. HuM chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil sent him for tarbiat or training in jihad at a terror camp in Afghanistan’s Yuvar.

After being rejected at the jihadi training centre, Masood Azhar took up the job of a teacher at the seminary and launched a magazine espousing jihad in early 1990s. His oratory skills brought him back in the jihadi scheme of HuM, which sent him to about two dozen countries for raising funds and reorganising fundamentalist groups in those countries. He came to India as part of the same design and was nabbed.

Terror dossier

After his release in 1999, Masood Azhar founded his own Jaish-e-Mohammed with the aid and support of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of the Pakistan Army. The JeM chief has remained a blue-eyed boy of the ISI and enjoyed the protection of China at international platforms betraying Pakistani government’s active support.

His JeM has been responsible for several terror attacks in India including at Jammu and Kashmir assembly premises, Parliament complex in 2001, Pathankot air base in 2016 and on a CRPF convoy at Pulwama this year. On Wednesday, the UN designated Masood Azhar a global terrorist.

This happened after China withdrew its veto, a technical hold, on Wednesday after blocking the move four times since 2009, soon after 26/11 terror attack. The JeM was proscribed by the UN in 2002 in the aftermath of attack on Parliament in December 2001.

The official ban on Masood Azhar has come as a big diplomatic victory of India. The action of the UN 1267 ISIL and Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee translates, officially, into a travel ban on Masood Azhar, freezing his assets and an embargo on any kind of arms deal.

This is the first major success for India against Masood Azhar since he was released in exchange for the safety of the passengers of IC-814 that had been hijacked by Pakistan-backed terrorists. Masood Azhar had been arrested in 1994 by Jammu and Kashmir Police when he was touring India delivering lectures in seminaries on a Portuguese visa. He had used the alias of Adam Issa, a Portuguese national of Gujarati origin.