The Indian government ordered killing of 20 individuals in Pakistan as part of a wider strategy to “eliminate terrorists living on foreign soil”, according to a report published by British daily newspaper The Guardian.
The Guardian, which published its report on Thursday, cited intelligence officials from Pakistan and India as well as relevant documents that it said were shared by Pakistani officials.
The report purportedly sheds light on how India’s foreign intelligence agency allegedly began to carry out assassinations abroad as part of its approach to national security after 2019.
“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,” it read.
The development comes after Pakistan’s foreign secretary Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi accused India of committing “extraterritorial and extrajudicial killings” within Pakistan during a presser earlier this year.
Other than Pakistan, the United States and Canada have also accused the Modi-led Indian government of assassination attempts on their territories.
Last year, Canada accused India’s government of involvement in the killing of a Canadian Sikh leader near Vancouver last June, prompting tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions after New Delhi rejected the charge as “absurd”.
Later, the US also accused an agent of the Indian government of directing the attempted assassination of an American citizen on US soil.
RAW, which allegedly planned all these assassinations, 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 Guardian report quoted Pakistani investigators saying that the deaths were orchestrated by Indian intelligence “sleeper-cells mostly operating out of the United Arab Emirates”.
Two Indian intelligence officers told The Guardian that the Indian spy agency’s shift to focusing on dissidents abroad was triggered by the Pulwama attack in 2019, when a suicide bomber targeted a military convoy in Illegally Indian-occupied Kashmir, killing 40 paramilitary personnel.
Pulwama attack: More information sought from India
The officers said India drew inspiration from intelligence agencies such as Israel’s Mossad and Russia’s KGB, often linked to extrajudicial killings on foreign soil. The killing of the Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in 2018 in the Saudi embassy, was directly cited by RAW officials, as per the report.
“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,” the report quoted one of the Indian officers as saying.
Pakistan has not yet commented on The Guardian’s report.