Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that intelligence agencies like Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) were only doing their job. He was replying to Rahul Kanwal of India Today, who referred to an article that had appeared in The Guardian on April 4. According to this article, at least 20 terrorists who had worked against Bharat and lived in Pakistan have been killed since 2020. This article claimed that all these anti-Bharat terrorists became victims of “target killings’’ and it appeared this was the handiwork of RAW.
Shah said that why should the issue of killings be discussed if the agencies were doing their job? “Bhai, jisne bhi maara, ismein pareshani kya hai? Agency agency ka kaam karegi,’’ Shah told the interviewer. He then asked the interviewer to go to opposition leaders and tell them that they should stay calm and not raise a ruckus about these killings.
Incidentally, just 10 days after The Guardian article appeared, one more anti-Bharat person was killed by “unknown gunmen’’ in Pakistan. On April 14 (Sunday), Amir Sarfaraz Tamba, an accused in Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh’s murder in 2013, was killed by unidentified gunmen in Lahore (Pakistan) on Sunday. Gunmen entered Tamba’s house, shot him, and made good on their escape on a motorcycle, according to the DIG of Lahore. Tamba was then taken to a hospital nearby by his brother. However, he succumbed to his bullet injuries.
Tamba was considered close to Hafiz Saeed, founder of Lashkar e Toiba (LeT), considered a important asset by Pakistan military intelligence agency Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
The Indian government assassinated individuals in Pakistan as part of a wider strategy to eliminate terrorists living on foreign soil, The Guardian had said in its article. “RAW 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 article had said.
The article had given details of the modus operandi adopted in the killing of Zahoor Mistry (alias Zahid Akhund). A Kashmiri terrorist, Zahoor was involved in the hijacking of Air India flight IC-814 from Kathmandu on December 24, 1999, with support of Pakistani military intelligence Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). This hijacking had led to Kandhar release of Maulana Masood Azhar from Kot Bhalwal jail in Jammu. Masood went on to found Islamist terrorist organisation Jaish e Mohammad (JeM) which carried out many terrorist activities in Bharat.
The article said that Akhund’s movements and location were monitored for several months by officials of the intelligence agencies from Bharat led by a woman. Posing as a journalist from the US, she managed to identity Zahoor Mistry and then money was paid to Afghan nationals for taking him out. Mistry was then killed in Karachi by these Afghans in March 2022.
Zahoor Mistry was the last surviving terrorist involved in the hijacking of December 1999. His four other companions of that hijacking had been killed over the years at different locations. Even the terrorists who were released by the government as demanded by Zahoor and others have been killed. The only surviving infamous terrorist of that hijacking saga is now JeM founder Masood Azhar. He has not made any public appearance for a long time in Pakistan. Earlier, he and other terrorists accompanying him roamed about in public seeking donations in the name of Islam.
The article said these assassinations of terrorists who had worked against Bharat were orchestrated from United Arab Emirates (UAE) soil. In response to article, India’s ministry of external affairs had denied all the allegations, adding these were “false and malicious anti-India propaganda”.
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