A report by The Washington Post published on Tuesday detailed an assassination programme allegedly executed by India’s external intelligence agency to kill about half a dozen individuals in Pakistan from 2021 onwards.
The Post examined six cases in Pakistan through interviews with Pakistani and Indian officials, the militants’ allies and family members, and a review of police documents and other evidence collected by Pakistani investigators. They revealed the contours of an ambitious Indian assassination programme with marked similarities to the operations in North America.
It detailed the attack on Amir Sarfraz Tamba, the man who allegedly killed Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh in Kot Lakhpat prison in 2013.
“The incident appeared to be the most recent example of what Pakistani officials call a striking development in the long-running shadow war between the two South Asian rivals.
“Although India and Pakistan have long used militant groups to sow chaos in each other’s country, India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has since 2021 deployed a methodical assassination program to kill at least a half dozen people deep within Pakistan, according to Pakistani and Western officials,” the Post said.
The article described Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as portraying himself as the most resolute and confrontational leader against India’s adversaries since the country’s independence.
“Since last year, India’s relations with Western governments have been rocked by allegations that RAW officials also ordered the assassination of Sikh separatists in Canada and the United States — operations that appeared to be an outgrowth of a campaign first tested and refined in Pakistan,” the Post added.
According to officials cited in the article, the killings in Pakistan were executed by local petty criminals or Afghan hired guns, but never by Indian nationals.
“To aid deniability, RAW officers employed businessmen in Dubai, a regional commercial hub, as intermediaries and deployed separate, siloed teams to surveil targets, execute killings and funnel payments from dozens of informal, unregulated banking networks known as hawalas set up in multiple continents, according to Pakistani investigators.
“But the RAW also at times used sloppy tradecraft and poorly trained contractors, mirroring what was observed by U.S. and Canadian law enforcement.”
The article explained that the killings in Pakistan predominantly targeted suspected leaders of two United Nations-designated terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, which India has accused of attacking its troops or, in the past, its citizens.
