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Masood Azhar, Zargar flown to Delhi

A Special Correspondent in Delhi

Maulana Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar have been flown by a special plane from Jammu to Delhi. A third militant, Ahmed Umar Sayed Sheikh, was released from Delhi's Tihar jail.

The militants accompanied External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh when he flew to Kandahar this afternoon.

Azhar and Zargar head the list of 36 militants whose release the hijackers sought in exchange for the 154 passengers aboard Flight 814.

Sheikh, whose release the hijackers had agreed on later, is a Pakistani-born British national. He was arrested by the Delhi police in 1994 for abducting four foreigners in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Later, he brought them to Ghaziabad.

On a tip-off, the Uttar Pradesh police had attempted a raid on the hideout, but had to withdraw after Sheikh and his gang shot dead an inspector. Finally, the Delhi police stepped in to release the hostages and arrest Sheikh.

A third militant, Abdul Aziz Dar, alias 'General' Musa, was also brought from the Srinagar central jail, where Zargar and he were imprisoned, to Jammu.

Presently imprisoned in the Srinagar central jail, Dar was arrested by the Border Security Force at Nageen in Srinagar in 1993 along with some Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front activists.

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