India has firmly denied claims of orchestrating assassinations in Pakistan, dismissing them as “false and malicious anti-India propaganda.” This response comes in the wake of allegations suggesting that the Indian government, through its Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), has been involved in nearly 20 killings in Pakistan since 2020.
According to a report in the UK newspaper The Guardian, citing Indian and Pakistani intelligence officials, these actions were purportedly part of an aggressive approach to eliminate terrorists on foreign soil, including targeting Sikh separatists within the Khalistan movement.
The allegations point to a strategy allegedly initiated after the Pulwama attack in 2019, to neutralize threats before they materialize. Two Indian intelligence officers suggested that the shift towards targeting dissidents abroad was influenced by global intelligence practices, drawing parallels with agencies like Mossad and the KGB. However, India’s Ministry of External Affairs has categorically denied these claims, echoing a previous statement by Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar that targeted killings abroad do not align with the government of India’s policy, as reported by The Guardian.
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Pakistani investigators have suggested that these assassinations were carried out by Indian intelligence sleeper cells, primarily operating from the United Arab Emirates, and allegedly employing local criminals or jihadists under false pretexts to execute the killings.
The Guardian report mentions the assassination of Zahid Akhund, known under the guise of Zahoor Mistry—a convicted terrorist implicated in the hijacking of an Air India aircraft. According to The Guardian, documents from Pakistan indicate that an agent from RAW is accused of funding the gathering of intelligence on Akhund’s whereabouts and activities over several months. It’s claimed that significant sums of money were transferred to individuals from Afghanistan for the execution of the shooting in Karachi in March 2022. Following the act, the perpetrators are said to have escaped across the national boundary, although their coordinators were apprehended by Pakistani security agencies later on.
A Pakistani official told The Guardian: “This policy of Indian agents organizing killings in Pakistan hasn’t been developed overnight. We believe they have worked for around two years to establish these sleeper cells in the UAE, which are mostly organizing the executions. After that, we began witnessing many killings.”
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However, a former high-ranking official from RAW refuted the idea that the agency was involved in extrajudicial killings. He asserted that such actions would not occur without the awareness of the National Security Adviser, who would in turn inform the Prime Minister, and sometimes, they would directly communicate with the Prime Minister. “I could not do anything without their approval,” he said.
He suggested that the killings were likely executed by Pakistan, a sentiment that others within India have echoed.
India maintains its stance, steadfastly denying any involvement in the alleged assassinations, as reported by The Guardian.
