 His family belonged to an Afridi tribe from the Tirah Valley in the tribal-belt region, that settled in Jammu and Kashmir.His father, Brigadier Thakur Rehmatullah Khan, was an army officer in the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles of the British Indian Army, and later emigrated to Abbottabad after the Partition of British India in 1947.His elder brother, Brigadier Aslam Khan, was an one-star rank army general in the Pakistan Army who earned his reputation as the ""Legend of Baltistan"" after his participation in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948, Pakistan's first war with India.