Islamabad: In a stunning revelation, a senior Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) commander has admitted on video that the family of Masood Azhar, the group's elusive founder, was "torn apart" during India's precision strikes inside Pakistan earlier this year under Operation Sindoor.

The confession, now viral online, comes from Masood Ilyas Kashmiri, a prominent JeM figure. Surrounded by armed personnel in the undated clip, Kashmiri recounts how Indian forces stormed their hideout and launched a devastating attack.

“We embraced terrorism and fought in Delhi, Kabul, and Kandahar to defend our ideology,” Kashmiri says in Urdu. “But on May 7, the Indian forces shattered Maulana Masood Azhar’s family in Bahawalpur.

Azhar is believed to reside there in a heavily fortified compound. While Pakistan officially banned the terror group in 2002, the ban has largely been cosmetic, with JeM continuing to operate with near-total impunity.

JeM’s main training facility in Bahawalpur lies just a few miles from a major army cantonment, the headquarters of Pakistan’s 31 Corps. This proximity to a key military installation, coupled with reports of a secret nuclear facility in the area, has long fueled allegations that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) not only shelters JeM but actively supports its operations.

Launched in retaliation to a brutal terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam that claimed 26 civilian lives, Operation Sindoor was a high-risk, cross-border offensive by the Indian armed forces. The mission targeted nine terrorist strongholds across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), striking at the core infrastructure of JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Among the targets was Bahawalpur, the 12th-largest city in Pakistan and JeM’s ideological and operational headquarters. Indian intelligence identified Jamia Masjid Subhan Allah, also known as the Usman-o-Ali campus, as a key command center. The city, located around 400 km from Lahore, was hit in what is now considered one of the most daring Indian military operations in recent history.

According to reports emerging post-strike, 10 members of Masood Azhar’s family were killed, a fact later confirmed in a rare statement issued by Azhar himself. The confirmation, paired with Kashmiri’s video, undercuts Islamabad’s long-standing denial of harbouring the terror mastermind.

JeM was founded in the early 2000s by Masood Azhar, a UN-proscribed terrorist, following his release from Indian custody in exchange for hostages during the 1999 IC-814 hijacking. Since then, the group has been responsible for numerous deadly attacks across India, including the 2016 Pathankot airbase assault and the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing.