New Delhi:
The Foreign Office denied the allegations in a report by British daily The Guardian, which accused India of carrying out targeted killings in Pakistan to eliminate terrorists. The ministry called it “false and malicious anti-India propaganda” and quoted External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar as saying that targeted killings in other countries were “not the policy of the Government of India”.
The ministry’s denial was mentioned in The Guardian’s report, which claimed that Delhi has “adopted a policy of targeting those it deems hostile to India”.
The report claims that up to 20 such killings have been carried out by Indian intelligence agency RAW since the 2019 Pulwama attack, saying it is based on evidence provided by Pakistan and interviews with intelligence officials from both sides of the border.
Quoting an unnamed Indian official, The Guardian reported that India had drawn inspiration from Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and Russia’s KGB – which have been linked to extrajudicial killings on foreign soil – and the murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. .
According to the report, Pakistani authorities produced documents about some of the killings, which could not be independently verified. It said Pakistani officials also alleged that the killings were orchestrated by sleeper cells of Indian intelligence based in the UAE.
Earlier, the US and Canada had accused India of being involved in assassinations and similar attempts on foreign soil.
In September last year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had claimed that there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement in the killing of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and a wanted terrorist in India, was shot outside a gurdwara in Surrey in June. India had dismissed the accusation as “absurd”.
Later, the US had claimed that it had foiled an attempt to assassinate another Khalistani separatist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
The US alleged that Pannun, a US-Canadian citizen, was the subject of an assassination attempt orchestrated by Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national, and an unnamed Indian government official.
India said it is investigating US input on the “nexus between organized criminals, arms smugglers, terrorists and others”, amid the US allegations.
“India takes such inputs seriously as it also harms our own national security interests. Issues in the context of the US input are already being examined by relevant departments,” former Foreign Office spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said.
Later, India had told the US that its investigation had revealed the involvement of a rogue official, Bloomberg reported. The report cited unnamed intelligence officials and said the person no longer worked for the agency.