Photo: Reuters
India's external intelligence agency carried out a systematic assassination program to kill roughly six people in Pakistan starting in 2021, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
Six of the killings were allegedly planned by the Research and Analysis Wing and were said to resemble alleged operations to assassinate Khalistan separatists in the United States and Canada.
The article cited unnamed officials who said that Pakistani petty criminals or hired shooters from Afghanistan were responsible for the deaths in Pakistan rather than Indian nationals., Scroll.in reported.
According to reports, the Research and Analysis Wing employed businessmen from Dubai as middlemen and assigned distinct teams to conduct surveillance, plan murders, and make payments via hawala, or unofficial international transnational financial networks.
One such claimed killing in 2022 was that of Zahoor Mistry, who was accused of murdering one Indian passenger during the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight in 1999.
Unnamed Pakistani officials told The Washington Post that a woman named Tanaz Ansari, who claimed to be an Indian intelligence official, was engaged in the assassination attempt on Mistry.
The woman allegedly paid two Pakistanis to track down Mistry, two Afghan citizens to shoot him, and three others from South East Asia, Africa, and West Asia to give at least $5,500, or approximately Rs 4.7 lakh, to those responsible for the killing.
According to unidentified Pakistani officials, the woman suspected of being an Indian spy was also engaged in the murder of Syed Khalid Raza, a militant leader active in Kashmir in the 1990s.
Shahid Latif, the purported mastermind behind the 2016 Pathankot attack, was shot in the Pakistani district of Sialkot in October 2023, with reports indicating that he was killed by unknown assailants.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that a gang of men led by Muhammad Umair, a labourer, shot Latif. Umair was later arrested and claimed to have revealed that he had been sent from Dubai to personally assassinate Latif after previous efforts had failed.
Umair also supposedly disclosed the location of a safe house in Dubai, according to the newspaper. Pakistani agents purportedly broke into the safehouse and discovered intelligence but did not find the two Indian tenants, Ashok Kumar Anand Salian and Yogesh Kumar.
India’s foreign ministry denied giving a response to The Washington Post on the allegations. In the past, Indian authorities neither confirmed nor denied their involvement in specific assassinations, claiming that such killings were not part of official policy.