India Eliminates Daniel Pearl’s Killer in Operation Targeting Pakistan

India’s Operation Sindoor has thrust Daniel Pearl’s name back into the spotlight, 23 years after his brutal murder in Pakistan, India Today reported on Friday. Pearl, a Jewish journalist working for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped on January 23, 2002, while investigating connections between terrorist organizations and Pakistan’s intelligence services.

Sindoor, or vermilion powder, is a traditional symbol of marriage worn by Hindu women in the parting of their hair or on their foreheads. When a woman is widowed, she traditionally removes it. During the April 22 terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, many Hindu men were killed simply for being Hindu, leaving their wives widowed. India named its retaliatory military action “Operation Sindoor” as a tribute to those women and a symbolic act of justice for their loss.

Operation Sindoor specifically targeted camps linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)—the same terrorist groups long implicated in Daniel Pearl’s murder.

While in Karachi, Pakistan, Daniel Pearl was kidnapped by Islamist militants en route to what he believed would be an interview with Pakistani cleric Mubarak Ali Gilani. Pearl had been based in Mumbai, India, for his South Asia bureau assignment and had traveled to Pakistan to report on the U.S.-led war on terror following the September 11 attacks. At the time of his abduction, he was investigating potential ties between British citizen Richard Reid—known as the “Shoe Bomber”—and al-Qaeda. Reid was believed to have trained at a facility associated with Gilani, who had been accused by U.S. authorities of links to the Pakistani terrorist group Jamaat ul-Fuqra.

Days after his disappearance, Pearl’s captors released a chilling video in which he was forced to denounce U.S. foreign policy and identify himself as a Jew, stating that he and his family had visited Israel. The video concluded with his brutal execution—his throat was slit and he was beheaded.

Pearl’s last words were, “My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. Back in the town of Bnei Brak, there is a street named after my great-grandfather, Chaim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town.”

One of the terror camps destroyed during Operation Sindoor was situated in Bahawalpur, a city known as a stronghold of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror organization. Led by Masood Azhar, JeM has been responsible for numerous attacks in India, including the 2001 Parliament assault and the 2019 Pulwama bombing.

Among the nine targets struck by the Indian Air Force on May 7, one was a significant facility in Bahawalpur associated with Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) confirmed that Abdul Rauf Azhar––brother of JeM chief Masood Azhar and one of India’s most wanted terrorists––was killed in the airstrike.

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