Rashid Minhas Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas or Rashid Minhas Shaheed , NH , ( ) ( February 17 , 1951 – August 20 , 1971 ) was a Pilot Officer in the Pakistan Air Force ( PAF ) during the 1971 Pakistan - India War . Minhas , a newly commissioned officer at that time , is the only PAF officer to receive the highest valour award , the Nishan - e - Haider . He is also the youngest person and the shortest - serving officer to have received this award . He is remembered for his death in 1971 in a jet trainer crash while struggling to regain the controls from a defecting pilot : Matiur Rahman . Early life and education . Rashid Minhas was born on February 17 , 1951 , in Karachi . He was born to a family that had settled in Gurdaspur from Jammu and Kashmir and belonged from a Minhas clan predominantly found in Northern Punjab and in Kashmir regions . After the creation of Pakistan , the family migrated there and lived near Sialkot . Minhas spent his early childhood in Lahore . Later , the family shifted to Rawalpindi . Minhas had his early education from St Mary ' s Cambridge School Rawalpindi . Later his family shifted to Karachi . Minhas was fascinated with aviation history and technology . He used to collect different models of aircraft and jets . He studied from Saint Mary ' s Cambridge School , Murree Road , Rawalpindi and completed his O Levels at the age of 16 . He also attended Greenwood Secondary School , Karachi and then attended Karachi University where he studied military history and aviation history . Death . Having joined the air force , Minhas was commissioned on March 13 , 1971 , in the 51st GD ( P ) Course . He began training to become a pilot . On August 20 of that year , in the hour before noon , he was getting ready to take off in a T - 33 jet trainer in Karachi , his second solo flight in that type of aircraft . Minhas was taxiing toward the runway when a Bengali instructor pilot , Flight Lieutenant Matiur Rahman , signalled him to stop and then climbed into the instructor ' s seat . The jet took off and turned toward India . Minhas radioed PAF Base Masroor with the message that he was being hijacked . The air controller requested that he resend his message , and he confirmed the hijacking . Later investigation showed that Rahman intended to defect to India to join his compatriots in the Bangladesh Liberation War , along with the jet trainer . In the air , Minhas struggled physically to wrest control from Rahman ; each man tried to overpower the other through the mechanically linked flight controls . Some from the Indian border , the jet crashed near Thatta . Both men were killed . 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 win the award . Similarly , Rahman was honoured by Bangladesh with their highest military award , the Bir Sreshtho . Minhas ' s Pakistan military citation for the Nishan - E - Haider states that he " forced the aircraft to crash " in order to prevent Rahman from taking the jet to India . This is the official , popular and widely known version of how Minhas died . Yawar A . Mazhar , a writer for Pakistan Military Consortium , relayed in 2004 that he spoke to retired PAF Group Captain Cecil Chaudhry about Minhas , and that he learned more details not generally known to the public . According to Mazhar , Chaudhry lead the immediate task of investigating the wreckage and writing the accident report . Chaudhry told Mazhar that he found the jet had hit the ground nose first , instantly killing Minhas in the front seat . Rahman ' s body , however , was not in the jet and the canopy was missing . Chaudhry searched the area and saw Rahman ' s body some distance behind the jet , the body found with severe abrasions from hitting the sand at a low angle and a high speed . Chaudhry thought that Minhas probably jettisoned the canopy at low altitude causing Rahman to be thrown from the cockpit because he was not strapped in . Chaudhry felt that the jet was too close to the ground at that time , too far out of control for Minhas to be able to prevent the crash . 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 .