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.

“The Sikh separatists who were targeted in Canada and the United States, Hardeep Singh Nijjar and Gurpatwant Pannun, were also designated as terrorists by India, although Western officials and analysts have disputed the persuasiveness of the Indian evidence against them,” it added.

Many aspects of India’s operations in Pakistan had not been disclosed before, per the piece. Both Pakistani and Indian officials, speaking anonymously due to the sensitive nature of intelligence activities and ongoing investigations, provided insights.

The killings remain a sensitive topic in Pakistan, as they challenge the counterintelligence effectiveness of its security agencies and undermine its assertions of not harbouring terrorists. However, some Pakistani officials now contend that as Modi’s India rises as a global power, it must be held accountable for executing extrajudicial killings with impunity, the article added.

The article stated that ISI Director General Nadeem Anjum had voiced significant concerns about Indian assassinations to CIA Director William J. Burns in 2022, according to a former Pakistani official, well before the US and Canadian allegations emerged.

“Our concerns arose independent of the US and Canadian investigations,” said a current Pakistani official. “Can India rise peacefully? Our answer is no.”

India’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment on the Post’s article.

The article further noted that Indian officials have historically neither confirmed nor denied involvement in specific killings, asserting that assassinations are not part of Indian policy. However, these officials frequently highlight that Pakistan and Western nations have declined to extradite terrorists despite India presenting evidence of their crimes, and they also point out that many Islamist militants in Pakistan have been eliminated by US drone strikes.

The article revealed that, around the same time, a RAW officer in New Delhi, Vikash Yadav, orchestrated an assassination attempt on Pannun, a Sikh separatist residing in New York, as outlined in a US federal indictment. The officer reportedly instructed his agent, businessman Nikhil Gupta, to hire a local assassin. Similar to Ansari, Yadav managed operations remotely, appeared pressed for time, and made comments hinting at a broader effort to eliminate a substantial list of targets.

“But unlike in Pakistan, US prosecutors said the New York plot was quickly foiled after Gupta unwittingly asked a DEA informant to introduce him to a hit man.

“Canadian officials, at the same time, said they also uncovered a sprawling Indian campaign to surveil, intimidate and even kill Sikhs. While criminal elements were employed, as in Pakistan, Indian diplomats stationed in Canada were also enlisted to monitor members of the Sikh diaspora, according to Canadian officials, who cited the diplomats’ private electronic conversations and text messages. It’s unclear how those conversations were obtained.”

The article stated that Christopher Clary, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at Albany who has studied the alleged Indian operations, remarked that the RAW’s record with targeted killings appeared similar to that of Israel’s external intelligence agency, Mossad. While Mossad successfully carried out assassinations in less-developed countries, its agents were captured on hotel surveillance cameras during a 2010 operation to kill a Hamas leader in Dubai.

“One read is [the RAW] had been succeeding in Pakistan for a full year before they start developing this effort in the West,” Clary said. “But the tactics, techniques and procedures that worked pretty well in Pakistan didn’t necessarily work in the West.”

The article noted that despite the setback, the RAW remained undeterred. Four weeks later, a group led by a labourer named Muhammad Umair shot Shahid Latif, whom Indian officials accused of orchestrating a 2016 raid on an Indian Air Force station that hindered diplomatic efforts between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif.

However, this time, the RAW faced a different type of backlash. After his arrest, Umair admitted he had been sent from Dubai to personally kill Latif after several failed attempts by his co-conspirators. According to two individuals familiar with the case, Umair revealed the location of a Dubai safe house, which led Pakistani agents to break into the apartment. They found valuable intelligence but did not locate its two Indian occupants, Ashok Kumar Anand Salian and Yogesh Kumar. (Umair could not be reached for comment.)

“Until that point, Pakistan had rarely acknowledged the Indian operations. But at a news conference in February, Pakistani Foreign Secretary Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi held up scans of passports belonging to Salian and Kumar and accused them of directing the murders of Latif and of Riyaz one month earlier. India dismissed Qazi’s claims as “false and malicious anti-India propaganda.”

Attempts by The Post to locate Salian were unsuccessful. The article mentioned that in April, Salian made his only public appearance during an interview with a pro-government Indian television channel. Sitting in a sparse New Delhi apartment and wearing dark sunglasses indoors, he claimed to be an ordinary business owner in Dubai. He stated that he employed a Pakistani worker at his cyber cafe, who might have acted without his knowledge, and denied any links to the RAW.

“After Pakistan arrested him, they must have seen who was his sponsor in Dubai,” Salian said. “I feel aggrieved that my details are being highlighted and my reputation damaged.”

Salian’s alleged accomplice, Kumar, also could not be located. Anmol Gora, a dairy business owner from the village in Rajasthan state that is listed as Kumar’s birthplace, said Kumar had not been seen there in five years. Residents said he was living in Dubai, Gora said.

“People in the village say he was involved in some shady business, which is why he just disappeared,” Gora said.

According to the piece, Pakistan began publicly calling out India in 2024 after Pakistani officials claimed that a series of assassinations appeared to benefit the Modi government domestically.

By late last year, many Indian pro-government television channels were running glowing programs marvelling at the RAW’s extraterritorial reach and efficiency. Pakistani officials were particularly galled by Indian news reports that emerged almost immediately after some slayings.

“In many cases they celebrated before even our police knew they were killed,” an official said.

A day after the Guardian published a report on assassinations in Pakistan this year, Modi — without explicitly confirming any slaying — boasted during a campaign rally of “entering [India’s enemies’] homes and killing them.”

Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, who Canadian officials say was named by Indian diplomats in their private conversations as the senior government official who directed the covert efforts, was similarly blithe. “Whoever did the killings, what’s the problem?” Shah said in a television interview. “The agency will do their jobs. why should we interfere?”

The article cited Srinath Raghavan, a renowned Indian military historian and former army officer who served in Kashmir, as saying that the Modi government has highlighted special forces raids inside Pakistan and promoted Bollywood films that glorify India’s covert operatives.

“The whole tagline is, ‘This is the New India,’” Raghavan said. “The Modi government came in with the view that you need to strike back, and you need to signal publicly that you’re doing it. It’s aimed at telling Pakistan that we’re willing to come and hit hard, but it also has a domestic component.”

The article stated that Kashmiri fighters, central to the conflict, argue that Indian officials have a motive to exaggerate their own deadly capabilities and that Pakistani officials should not be taken at face value either. Nevertheless, analysts suggest that Indian officials have clearly shown their extensive and lethal reach to both Pakistan and the Indian public.

Asad Durrani, a former director general of Pakistan’s ISI, added that it may serve the interests of certain officials in both India and Pakistan to continue their shadow war, aiming to destabilise each other and gain political advantages.

“Any state, or non-state actor, that can get away with an act would do so,” Durrani said. “Neither side is willing to pay the price of peace.”