India involved in killing of six people in Pakistan: Washington Post

India's external intelligence agency executed a methodical execution assassination programme to kill about six individuals in Pakistan, the United States (US) based newspaper Washington Post disclosed in a report on Tuesday.

India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) allegedly planned the killing of the individuals in Pakistan; six such killings were said to have similarities to the alleged operations carried out to assassinate Khalistan separatists in the US and Canada, according to The Washington Post report.

The US-based newspaper quoted an unidentified source as confirming that the killings in Pakistan were orchestrated not by Indian citizens but by Pakistani petty criminals or hired shooters from Afghanistan.

According to the report, RAW allegedly hired Dubai-based businessmen as intermediaries. The businessmen were then put in separate teams to carry out surveillance, organise killings, and arrange for payments through hawala or informal transnational financial networks.

The Washington Post writes that unidentified Pakistani officials told the publication that a woman who called herself Tanaz Ansari but was, in fact, said to be an Indian intelligence official, was involved in the operation to kill Zahoor Mistry in 2022, who was said to have murdered an Indian passenger during the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight in 1999.

As per the newspaper, Tanaz Ansari allegedly hired two Pakistani and two Afghan citizens to track and kill Mistry.

The woman was also allegedly involved in the killing of Syed Khalid Raza, who had been active in Kashmir in the 1990s. 

A labourer group led by Muhammad Umair shot dead the alleged mastermind of the 2016 Pathankot attack, Shahid Latif, in the Pakistani district of Sialkot in October 2023; however, Umair, after his arrest, was said to have admitted that he had been sent from Dubai to kill Latif. Umair also allegedly disclosed the location of a safe house in Dubai, as per the newspaper report.

Additionally, Pakistani agents, on the basis of intelligence, broke into the Dubai safe house but did not find two Indians who were said to be the tenants. Their names are Ashok Kumar, Anand Salian, and Yogesh Kumar, said the US-based newspaper.

The Washington Post claimed that Indian authorities have neither confirmed nor denied their role in specific assassinations in the past; however, it stated that such killings were not part of official policy.

The accusations came eight months after the RAW was accused of being involved in an alleged plot to assassinate Khalistan separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and in the killing of another Khalistan separatist leader known as Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.