Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas () was a Pakistani fighter pilot and the fifth recipient of Pakistan's highest military award, the Nishan-e-Haider. Minhas was the first and only officer from the Pakistan Air Force to receive the Nishan-e-Haider, and was also the youngest person and the shortest-serving officer to have received the award. During a routine training mission in August 1971, Minhas attempted to gain control of his jet trainer when his superior officer Flight Lieutenant Matiur Rahman took control over the plane to join the Bangladesh War of Independence but Minhas resisted his efforts to control the aircraft and crashed it in Sujawal District in Pakistan.

Biography

Rashid Minhas was born on 17 February 1951 to Begum Rashida Minhas (1926–2021), at Karachi in a Punjabi Muslim Rajput family of the Minhas clan. Rashid Minhas spent his early childhood in Karachi. Later, the family shifted to Rawalpindi, before returning to Karachi. Minhas was fascinated with aviation history and technology. He used to collect different models of aircraft and jets. He attended St. Patrick's High School, Karachi.

The ancestors of Rashid Minhas belonged to Qila Sobha Singh in Narowal District and later on they moved to Karachi and Rashid Minhas was born in Karachi. His father, Majeed Minhas, a civil engineer and an alumnus of the NED University in Karachi, was in a construction management business who later moved to Lahore, Punjab, for the construction projects. Rashid was educated in Lahore and enrolled in the British-managed St. Mary's School in Rawalpindi when his father found an employment opportunity. But later they permanently settled in Karachi. His father, Majeed Minhas, wanted his son, Rashid, to follow in his footsteps by attending the engineering university and strongly desired for his son to gain a degree in engineering after finishing his high school in Karachi.

Minhas was posthumously awarded Pakistan's top military honour, the Nishan-e-Haider, and became the youngest man and the only member of the Pakistan Air Force to receive the award. Later, after Bangladesh was created, it gave its highest military award, the Bir Sreshtho, Rahman.

Minhas's Pakistan military citation for the Nishan-e-Haider states that he "forced the aircraft to crash" to prevent Rahman from taking the jet to India.

Citation of Gallantry

Legacy

After his death, Minhas was honoured as a national hero. In his memory, the Pakistan Air Force base at Kamra was renamed PAF Base Minhas, often called Minhas-Kamra. In Karachi, he was honoured by the naming of a main road, 'Rashid Minhas Road' (). A two-rupee postage stamp bearing his image was issued by Pakistan Post in December 2003; 500,000 were printed.

Awards and decorations

{| style="margin:1em auto; text-align:center;"

| colspan="4" |

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{| class="wikitable" style="margin:1em auto; text-align:center;"

|Nishan-e-Haider

(Emblem of the Lion)

1971 War

<u>Posthumously</u>

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See also

  • Major Aziz Bhatti
  • Squadron leader Sarfaraz Ahmed Rafiqui
  • Squadron leader Muniruddin Ahmed

References

  • Pilot-Officer Rashid Minhas at Pakistan Army website