Sialkot: Shahid Latif, the mastermind behind the Pathankot attack and one of India’s most wanted terrorists, was shot dead by unknown assailants in Pakistan’s Sialkot on Wednesday.
41-year-old Shahid Latif was a member of the proscribed terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and the key conspirator of the Pathankot attack launched on January 2, 2016.
He had coordinated the attack from Sialkot and sent down four JeM terrorists to Pathankot to execute it.
In 1994, Latif was arrested from Jammu in a case related to narcotics and terrorism. He was deported back to Pakistan via the Wagah border in 2010 after serving a 16-year-long jail term.
Shahid Latif was listed as a terrorist by the Indian government after the NIA said in its probe that Latif went back to the Jihadi factory in Pakistan after he was released in 2010.
When Indian Airlines plane IC814 was hijacked by five armed men to Kandahar in Afghanistan in 1999, Shahid Latif was one of those whose release was demanded by the terrorists. Masood Azhar, however, was one of the prisoners freed along with two others in lieu of 189 passengers and crew members caught in a hostage situation on the plane.
