Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office ordered the assassination of individuals in neighbouring Pakistan, Indian and Pakistani intelligence operatives have told the Guardian. According to the report, the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), an agency that is directly controlled by PM Modi’s office, had undertaken the strategy to “eliminate terrorists living on foreign soil”.
“This policy of Indian agents organising 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 who are mostly organising the executions. After that, we began witnessing many killings,” a Pakistani official told The Guardian.
The report suggested India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) developed a sleeper cell in the UAE, and orchestrated the killings from there. In order to carry out the assassinations, the article said, Indian officials gave big amounts of money to poor Pakistanis — and, on occasions, got the job done by jihadists who were made to feel that they were killing “infidels”.
Analysts feel Pakistan has been reluctant to publicly acknowledge the killings as most of the targets are known terrorists and associates of banned militant groups that Islamabad has long denied sheltering, the report said.
The fresh claims relate to almost 20 killings since 2020, carried out by unknown gunmen in Pakistan. While India has previously been unofficially linked to the deaths, this is the first time Indian intelligence personnel have discussed the alleged operations in Pakistan, and detailed documentation has been seen alleging RAW’s direct involvement in the assassinations.
The allegations also suggest that Sikh separatists in the Khalistan movement were targeted as part of these Indian foreign operations, both in Pakistan and the west.
According to Pakistani investigators, these deaths were orchestrated by Indian intelligence sleeper-cells mostly operating out of the United Arab Emirates. The rise in killings in 2023 was credited to the increased activity of these cells, which are accused of paying millions of rupees to local criminals or poor Pakistanis to carry out the assassinations. Indian agents also allegedly recruited jihadists to carry out the shootings, making them believe they were killing “infidels”.
Paramjit Singh Panjwar, the head of the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), was killed in Lahore May last year. Zia-ur Rahman of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Mufti Qaiser Farooq, a close aide of LeT chief Hafiz Saeed were killed in September. JeM terrorist Shahid Latif who masterminded the 2016 attack on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot was shot dead by unidentified assailants in a mosque in Daska town of Pakistan’s Sialkot in October.
One of the masterminds of the 2018 terrorist attack on an Indian Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir’s Sunjuwan that led to the death of five Indian Army soldiers, Khawaja Shahid, and LeT recruiter and commander Akram Khan Ghazi and JeM chief’s close aide Raheem Ullah Tariq were all killed in November.
In October 2023, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had cited what he said was credible evidence of a potential link between Indian agents and the murder of a Sikh terrorist Nijjar.
The next month, the US Department of Justice had said an Indian government official directed an unsuccessful plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist on US soil.
“It is critical to bring to justice the perpetrators, facilitators, financiers and sponsors of these extra-judicial and extra-territorial killings. India must be held accountable internationally for its blatant violation of international law,” the FO said.
Indian officials have dismissed a media report that said the Indian government orchestrated killings of individuals in Pakistan as part of a bid to eliminate terrorists living on foreign soil.
Officials familiar with the developments told CNN-News18 that the article by British daily The Guardian is “false and fabricated”, and designed to malign the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They accused Pakistan’s notorious spy agency of carrying out the assassinations.
They stressed that when India says “we will eliminate terrorists by entering their homes”, it only refers to tensions in the border region and eliminating terrorists there who pose a threat to India’s sovereignty.
The Guardian also reported that India’s external affairs ministry rejected the allegations and said they were “false and malicious anti-India propaganda”. It highlighted a denial made by foreign minister S Jaishankar where he said that targeted killings in other countries were “not the government of India’s policy”.
