[1] Azhar was born in Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan on 10 July 1968[6] (although some sources list his birth date as 7 August 1968[7]) as the third of 11 children—five sons and six daughters.

Azhar's father, Allah Bakhsh Shabbir, was the headmaster at a government-run school as well as a cleric with Deobandi leanings and his family operated a dairy and poultry farm.

[8] The madrasa was heavily involved with Harkat-ul-Ansar and Azhar was subsequently assumed under its folds, after being enrolled for a jihad training camp at Afghanistan.

[7][6] Azhar later became the general secretary of Harkat-ul-Ansar and visited many international locations to recruit, to raise funds and to spread the message of Pan-Islamism.

[6] Azhar confessed that in 1993 he traveled to Nairobi, Kenya to meet with leaders of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya[citation needed], an al-Qaeda-aligned Somali group, who had requested money and recruits from Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM).

Azhar made contacts in Britain who helped to provide training and logistical support the terror plots including "7/7, 21/7 and the attempt in 2006 to smuggle liquid bomb-making substances on to transatlantic airlines.

[11] In early 1994, Azhar travelled to Srinagar under a fake identity, to ease tensions between Harkat-ul-Ansar's feuding factions of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.

[9] Four years later, in December 1999, an Indian Airlines Flight 814 (IC814) en route from Kathmandu in Nepal to New Delhi was hijacked and eventually landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan after being flown to multiple locations.

Subsequently, Azhar was freed by the Indian government in a decision criticised by many including Ajit Doval as a "diplomatic failure", and that no one worth any consequence was contacted either by the (then) foreign minister (Jaswant Singh) or the (then) foreign secretary (Lalit Mansingh), and as a consequence, the Indian ambassador could not even get inside the Abu Dhabi airport.

He proclaimed, "I have come here because this is my duty to tell you that Muslims should not rest in peace until we have destroyed India," vowing to liberate the Kashmir region from Indian rule.

[11] On 7 December 2008, it was claimed that he was among several arrested by the Pakistani government after a military raid on a camp located on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Indian investigative agencies have given dossiers containing proofs of Azhar's complicity in the terror attack and also sought a second ʽred corner noticeʼ from ʽInterpolʼ.

[37][38][39] The Chinese government blocked a UN Security Council Sanctions Committee listing of Azhar as a terrorist, thwarting international efforts to disrupt the activities of his group.

China moved to protect Azhar again in October 2016 when it blocked India's appeal to the United Nations to label him as a terrorist.

[44] However, China pulled the blockade in May 2019, finally resulting listing of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee.