ISLAMABAD: The Washington Post has exposed India’s involvement in terrorism and targeted killings in Pakistan, reporting that India’s intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) used hired criminals and Afghan shooters in Pakistan. There have been at least six targeted killings.
The Washington Post reports that RAW conducted a secret assassination campaign, fueling a wave of targeted killings in Pakistan. The report added that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has positioned himself as the strongest Indian leader since independence, driving the country’s initiatives beyond its borders.
“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown himself to be tougher and more willing to confront India’s enemies than any other leader since India’s independence,” the report said.
The Washington Post examined six cases of planned targeted killings in Pakistan through interviews with Pakistani and Indian officials, militants’ allies and family members, and a review of police documents and other evidence collected by Pakistani investigators. took In Pakistan, the killings were carried out by Pakistani petty criminals or Afghan hired guns, never by Indian nationals, officials said.
According to the Pakistani, to help with denial, RAW officers employed businessmen in a Middle Eastern country as intermediaries to monitor targets, carry out assassinations, and arrange payments through dozens of informal, unorganized banking networks. It deployed separate, silent teams, known as hawalats, on several continents. The investigator
The report said that the Indian intelligence agency RAW has planned six killings in Pakistan since 2021. Allegedly planned by RAW, the six killings are said to be similar to alleged operations to kill Khalistan separatists in the US and Canada. Since last year, India’s relations with Western governments have been strained by allegations that RAW officials even ordered the killing of Sikh separatists in Canada and the United States — operations first tried and perfected in Pakistan. The result of the campaign is known. said.
It detailed the attack on Aamir Sarfaraz Tamba, who allegedly killed Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh in Kot Lakhpat Jail in 2013.
“The incident appears to be the latest example of what Pakistani officials call a dramatic development in the long-running battle between the two South Asian rivals.
In 2012, VK Singh, an Indian army general, led a small-scale bombing group inside Pakistan, attempting to kill Syed Salahuddin, a Kashmiri militant leader in Pakistan, a former Indian official said. . (Salahuddin is alive.) Pakistan believes India also played a role in the 2013 shooting outside an Islamabad bakery that killed Nasiruddin Haqqani, a former Pakistani official said. He was suspected of bombing the Indian embassy in Kabul. But it wasn’t until 2021, when Modi won re-election on his tough stance against Pakistan, that a series of targeted killings began. That June, a Pakistani hired by Indian intelligence detonated a car bomb outside the security perimeter of a compound in Lahore where Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed was present, according to Pakistani and Indian officials. The blast failed to reach Saeed.
After that operations gained speed and accuracy. Ra seems to have preferred pistol-wielding gunmen to bombs. Instead of top leaders, India went after less conservative militants. Eight months after the blast that targeted Saeed, assassins shot dead Zahoor Mistry, who had killed an Indian passenger during the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight in 1999.
Pakistani officials, citing confessions from four suspects later captured, said the operation to kill Mistry was detailed: a woman who identified herself as Tanz Ansari, believed to be an Indian; The intelligence officer’s alias is, recruited two Pakistanis, two Afghan nationals, to track down Mistry. He and three other people living in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East were shot dead and deposited at least $5,500 to Pakistan. Pay those involved. Hours before the murder, Ansari urged his Pakistani agent on the ground, Shiraz Ghulam Sarwar, to confirm Mistry’s identity and exact location. The server bombarded Mistry with WhatsApp video calls, claiming to be a customer service agent from the ride-hailing app, according to screenshots of Mistry’s phone reviewed by The Post. Mistry rejected several video calls, replying, “I have not booked any ride.” A few minutes later, Ansari himself messaged Mistry. Mistry rejected several video calls, replying, “I have not booked any ride.”
Five days later, Ansari struck again, killing Syed Khalid Raza, a militant leader active in Kashmir in the 1990s, according to Pakistani officials. This time, he said, Ansari tapped Mohammad Ali Afridi, a Pakistani man he had first recruited on Facebook in 2018, to track Raza’s routine over several days, for the two slain men. Bought a pistol and finally buried the weapon in the river bank after Reza. was killed.
In a tense WhatsApp exchange obtained after Afridi’s arrest by Pakistani authorities and reviewed by The Post, Ansari expressed displeasure over whether Afridi had a security guard at Raza’s building. It was dangerous to ask about his whereabouts. But he demanded Afridi send photographs confirming Raza’s identity, saying he otherwise did not have permission from higher authorities to greenlight the operation and pay him. At one point, the two discussed another target who was struggling to find Ansari in Karachi’s Defense Housing Authority neighborhood.
Pakistani officials say they have never discovered Ansari’s true identity. (Neither Afridi, who is awaiting trial, nor Sarwar could be reached for comment.) But Raza’s murder, which took place in February 2023, foreshadowed at least two acts. which Western officials say were launched by Indian intelligence this spring.
Shahid Latif, the alleged mastermind of the 2016 Pathankot attack, was gunned down in October 2023 in Pakistan’s Sialkot district, according to reports at the time, by unknown assailants. The Washington Post report claimed that Latif was shot dead by a group of men led by a laborer named Muhammad Umeer. Later, he added, Umeer was arrested. After such previous attempts failed, he is said to have confessed that he had been sent from abroad to kill Latif. According to the newspaper, Umair also allegedly revealed the location of a safe house in the country.
Additionally, Pakistani agents later allegedly broke into the safe house, where they found classified information, but did not find the two Indians who were said to be the tenants. Their names are Ashok Kumar Anand Salyan and Yogesh Kumar.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs refused to respond to the Washington Post on these allegations. Indian officials have neither confirmed nor denied their role in specific killings in the past, but have said such killings are not part of official policy. The allegations come eight months after Raw was accused of involvement in the alleged plot to kill Khalistan separatist leader Gurpatunt Singh Panon and the murder of another Khalistan separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Najjar.
Earlier in April 2024, a report by The Guardian revealed that the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had “ordered the killing” on Pakistani soil. Exposing the Indian campaign of extraterritorial and extrajudicial killings, Pakistan’s then Foreign Secretary Cyrus Qazi said in January 2024 that Islamabad had “credible evidence” linking Indian agents to the two killings. His citizens on his land. In the report, the UK Daily newspaper claimed that New Delhi “killed people in Pakistan”.
Diplomatic circles believe that the world should take notice of Indian aggression and violation of international laws.