The following report, which lacks any official veracity has been peddled by the Guardian. Akin to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “credible allegations”, the report devoid of irrefutable evidence smacks of bias and appears to be a motivated attempt to fan distrust towards the current dispensation and tarnish India’s image among the comity of nations.

While whitewashing Pakistan’s role as the safe haven for terrorist organisations, their overground workers, underground terror networks and proscribed terrorists, the Guardian refers to them as “militants” and calls the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir as “Indian Administrated Kashmir”. The language is in line with Pakistan’s stance and seems to be a shoddy attempt to give cover to Pakistan’s nefarious activities.

Indian and Pakistani intelligence operatives, as reported by the Guardian, claim that the Indian government targeted individuals in Pakistan for elimination, as a component of their broader strategy to eradicate terrorists residing abroad.

Conversations with intelligence personnel from both nations, alongside materials disclosed by Pakistani investigators, provide fresh insights into the purported commencement of overseas assassinations by India's foreign intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), as a manifestation of a more assertive stance towards national security post-2019. The agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), is directly controlled by the office of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, who is running for a third term in office in elections later this month.

The accounts appear to bolster claims suggesting that Delhi has adopted a strategy of going after those it views as hostile to India. Alongside the recent accusations concerning individuals accused of grave and violent terrorist activities, India has faced public allegations from both Washington and Ottawa regarding its alleged role in the killings of dissident figures, such as a Sikh activist in Canada, and a failed assassination attempt on another Sikh individual in the US last year.

The recent allegations relate to nearly 20 killings occurring since 2020, conducted by unidentified gunmen within Pakistan. Although India has previously been informally associated with these deaths, it marks the first instance of Indian intelligence officials openly discussing the purported operations in Pakistan, the report alleges. Furthermore, the Guardian claims to have detailed documentation suggesting RAW's direct participation in these 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.

As per Pakistani investigators, the orchestrators behind these deaths were Indian intelligence sleeper cells primarily based in the United Arab Emirates. The surge in killings witnessed in 2023 was attributed to the heightened operations of these cells, allegedly involving the payment of substantial sums of money, amounting to millions of rupees, to local criminals or impoverished individuals in Pakistan to execute the assassinations. Indian agents also allegedly recruited jihadists to carry out the shootings, making them believe they were killing “infidels”.

According to two Indian intelligence officers, the spy agency's shift towards targeting dissidents abroad was prompted by the Pulwama attack in 2019. This incident involved a suicide bomber attacking a military convoy in India administrated Kashmir, resulting in the deaths of 40 paramilitary personnel. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility for the attack.

Modi was running for a second term at the time and was brought back to power in the aftermath of the attack.

“After Pulwama, the approach changed to target the elements outside the country before they are able to launch an attack or create any disturbance,” one Indian intelligence operative said. “We could not stop the attacks because ultimately their safe havens were in Pakistan, so we had to get to the source.”

To conduct such operations “needed approval from the highest level of government”, he added.

The officer stated that India had drawn inspiration from intelligence agencies like Israel's Mossad and Russia's KGB, both of which have been associated with extrajudicial killings outside their borders. Additionally, he mentioned that RAW officials had directly referenced the assassination of the Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in 2018 inside the Saudi embassy.

“It was a few months after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi that there was a debate among the top brass of intelligence in the prime minister’s office about how something can be learned from the case. One senior officer said in a meeting that if Saudis can do this, why not us?” he recounted.

“What the Saudis did was very effective. You not only get rid of your enemy but send a chilling message, a warning to the people working against you. Every intelligence agency has been doing this. Our country cannot be strong without exerting power over our enemies.”

Senior officials from two distinct Pakistani intelligence agencies have expressed suspicion regarding India's potential involvement in approximately 20 killings since 2020. They have highlighted evidence of previously undisclosed investigations into seven of these cases. This evidence includes witness testimonies, arrest records, financial statements, WhatsApp messages, and passports, which investigators claim provide detailed insight into the operations carried out by Indian agents to assassinate targets within Pakistan. The Guardian has seen the documents but they could not be independently verified.

The intelligence sources claimed that targeted assassinations increased significantly in 2023, accusing India of involvement in the suspected deaths of about 15 people, most of whom were shot at close range by unknown gunmen.

In a response to the Guardian, India’s Ministry of External Affairs denied all the allegations, reiterating an earlier statement that they were “false and malicious anti-India propaganda”. The ministry emphasized a previous denial made by India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, that targeted killings in other countries were “not the government of India’s policy”.

According to Pakistani documents, in the case of the killing of Zahid Akhund, an alias for the convicted Kashmiri militant Zahoor Mistry who was involved in the deadly hijacking of an Air India flight, a RAW handler allegedly provided payment for information on Akhund's whereabouts and movements over several months. Subsequently, she allegedly made direct contact with him, posing as a journalist interested in interviewing a militant, intending to verify his identity.

“Are you Zahid? I am a journalist from the New York Post,” read messages in the dossier shown to the Guardian. Zahid is said to have responded, “For what u r messaging me?”

Millions of rupees were then allegedly paid to Afghan nationals to carry out the shooting in Karachi in March 2022. They fled over the border but their handlers were later arrested by Pakistani security agencies.

Based on the evidence gathered by Pakistan, the killings were frequently coordinated from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where RAW reportedly established sleeper cells. These cells were purportedly tasked with organising various aspects of the operations separately and recruiting individuals to carry out the killings.

Investigators have alleged that substantial sums of money, often amounting to millions of rupees, were frequently paid to criminals or financially disadvantaged individuals to execute the murders. Documents suggest that these payments were primarily facilitated through transactions in Dubai. Additionally, meetings of RAW handlers responsible for overseeing the killings are reported to have occurred in Nepal, the Maldives, and Mauritius.

“This policy of Indian agents organising killings in Pakistan hasn’t been developed overnight,” said a Pakistani official. “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.”

There have reportedly been multiple attempts to murder Shahid Latif, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed and one of the most infamous militants in India. The documents ultimately state that the October assassination in Pakistan was ultimately carried out by a 20-year-old illiterate Pakistani who was purportedly hired by RAW in the United Arab Emirates while he was receiving a meagre wage in an Amazon packing warehouse.

Pakistani investigators found that the man had allegedly been paid 1.5m Pakistani rupees (£4,000) by an undercover Indian agent to track down Latif and later was promised 15m Pakistani rupees and his own catering company in the UAE if he carried out the killing. The young man shot Latif dead in a mosque in Sialkot but was arrested soon after, along with accomplices.

The killings of Bashir Ahmad Peer, commander of the militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, and Saleem Rehmani, who was on India’s most-wanted list, were also allegedly planned out of the UAE, with transaction receipts from Dubai appearing to show payments of millions of rupees to the killers. Rehmani’s death had previously been reported as the result of a suspected armed robbery.

Since the majority of the victims were known militants or members of banned militant organisations that Islamabad has long denied harbouring, analysts believe that Pakistani authorities have been hesitant to officially recognise the killings.

In most cases, public information about their deaths has been scant. However, Pakistani agencies showed evidence they had conducted investigations and arrests behind closed doors.

The figures given to the Guardian match up with those collated by analysts who have been tracking unclaimed militant killings in Pakistan. According to Ajay Sahni, the executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in Delhi, his organisation had documented 20 suspicious fatalities in Pakistan by unknown attackers since 2020, though two had been claimed by local militant groups. He emphasised that because of Pakistan’s refusal to publicly investigate the cases – or even acknowledge that these individuals had been living in their jurisdiction – “we have no way of knowing the cause”.

“If you look at the numbers, there is clearly a shift in intent by someone or other,” said Sahni. “It would be in Pakistan’s interest to say this has been done by India. Equally, one of the legitimate lines of inquiry would be possible involvement of the Indian agencies.”

Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi, publicly acknowledged two of the killings in a press conference in January, where he accused India of carrying out a “sophisticated and sinister” campaign of “extraterritorial and extrajudicial killings” in Pakistan.

India has long accused Pakistan of funding a violent militant uprising in the India-administered Kashmir and providing refuge to militants. During the early 2000s, India experienced a series of terrorist attacks masterminded by Islamist militant groups based in Pakistan. These attacks included the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, resulting in over 160 casualties, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which claimed the lives of 172 individuals.

India and Pakistan are known to have carried out cross-border intelligence operations, including small bomb blasts. However, analysts and Pakistani officials described the alleged systematic targeted killings of dissidents by Indian agents on Pakistani soil since 2020 as “new and unprecedented”.

The majority of those allegedly killed by RAW in Pakistan in the past three years are the members of militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, and in several cases have convictions or proven links to some of India’s deadliest terrorist incidents, which have killed hundreds of people. Others were seen to be “handlers” of Kashmiri militants who helped coordinate attacks and spread information from afar.

According to one of the Indian intelligence officers, the Pulwama attack in 2019 prompted fears that militant groups in Pakistan were planning a repeat of attacks such as the 2008 Mumbai bombings.

“The previous approach had been to foil terrorist attacks,” he said. “But while we were able to make significant progress in bringing the militant numbers down in Kashmir, the problem was the handlers in Pakistan. We could not just wait for another Mumbai or an attack on parliament when we are aware that the planners were still operating in Pakistan.”

In September, during a session in parliament, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that there were "credible allegations" suggesting the involvement of Indian agents in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a well-known Sikh activist who was fatally shot in Vancouver. Shortly after, the US Department of Justice unveiled an indictment providing vivid details of an Indian agent's attempt to hire a hitman in New York to assassinate another Sikh activist, later identified as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

The assassination of Panjwar is among the incidents purportedly conducted by Indian operatives employing what Pakistani agencies termed as the "religious method." According to the documents, Indian agents utilised social media platforms to infiltrate networks associated with the Islamic State (IS) and factions linked to the Taliban. Within these networks, they allegedly recruited and indoctrinated Pakistani Islamist radicals, persuading them to carry out targeted killings of Indian dissidents under the guise of "sacred killings" of "infidels."

The alleged agents reportedly sought assistance from former IS fighters hailing from the Indian state of Kerala. These individuals had travelled to Afghanistan to join IS but surrendered after 2019 and were repatriated through diplomatic channels. They were allegedly utilised to gain access to jihadist networks for the operations.

According to an investigation by the Pakistani agencies, Panjwar’s killer, who was later caught, allegedly thought he was working on the instructions of the Pakistan Taliban affiliate Badri 313 Battalion and had to prove himself by killing an enemy of Islam.

RAW allegedly carried out the killing of Riyaz Ahmed, a top Lashkar-e-Taiba commander, in September last year in a similar manner. His killer, Pakistan believes, was recruited through a Telegram channel for those who wanted to fight for IS, and which had been infiltrated by RAW agents.

They have claimed the assassin was Muhammad Abdullah, a 20-year-old from Lahore. He allegedly told Pakistani investigators he was promised he would be sent to Afghanistan to fight for IS if he passed the test of killing an “infidel” in Pakistan, with Ahmed presented as the target. Abdullah shot and killed Ahmed during early morning prayers at a mosque in Rawalkot, but was later arrested by Pakistani authorities.

Western nations that have pushed for intelligence-sharing agreements and maintained an increasingly tight strategic and economic relationship with Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government may find themselves faced with challenging questions in the wake of the allegations of extrajudicial killings, which would be against international law.

A former senior RAW official who served before Modi's premiership refuted the notion that extrajudicial killings were within the agency's mandate. He affirmed that no action would be taken without the awareness of the national security adviser, who would subsequently inform the prime minister. Occasionally, they would directly report to the prime minister. “I could not do anything without their approval,” he said.

The former RAW official claimed that the killings were more likely to have been carried out by Pakistan themselves, a view that has been echoed by others in India.

Pakistani agencies refuted these claims, highlighting a list of over two dozen dissidents residing in Pakistan to whom they had recently issued direct warnings about threats to their lives, advising them to go into hiding. Three individuals in Pakistan confirmed receiving these warnings. They asserted that others who disregarded the threats and persisted with their regular activities were now dead.

Image source: News18