New Delhi: In fear of what is being termed as India’s “death squads”, Pakistan has increased the security of individuals designated as terrorists by India, whose existence on Pakistani soil Islamabad has denied till now.
The revelation was brought about by a report by The Intercept which cited “secret documents” produced by Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) claiming that India hired individuals to assassinate several “Sikh and Kashmiri activists” living in Pakistan.
While Pakistan has in the past accused India of being in bed with the Afghan intelligence, the report says India is also using the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a base for its intelligence operations.
Sources in the Indian security establishment rubbished reports suggesting the existence of any “death squads”, adding that they too came across reports of some who do and some who don’t figure on India’s list of wanted terrorists being gunned down by “unknown gunmen” in Pakistan.
“Some of the (reported) deaths actually happened and it is believed it is the ISI which is cleaning up its own house, while some are just social media buzz. Those killed are wanted terrorists who have been in Pakistan for years and now don’t serve any purpose to the Pakistani establishment,” said one source.
Pakistan has on multiple occasions accused India of promoting terror — a claim that has been widely rebuffed.
In its report, The Intercept said that Pakistani security officials believe India is working in conjunction with local criminal and dissident networks to carry out assassinations and other attacks.
“According to the documents, R&AW is targeting individuals and religious institutions alleged to support an armed insurgency in the disputed territory of Kashmir, as well as militant Sikh activists living in Pakistan and wanted by the Indian government,” it read.
The said “secret documents” warn Pakistani officials to use “heightened vigilance” and “fool proof security measures” to guard these individuals, said the report.
It added that in May, the Pakistan IB warned that “Indian intelligence agents based in two other countries, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan, are being activated to carry out operations in Pakistan, suggesting that Indian operatives have a footprint throughout the region”.
According to the report, in September this year, the Pakistan IB warned officials that R&AW was planning “terrorist attacks” and assassinations of targets in Pakistan. “RAW agents were operating from a militant training camp in the Afghan city of Spin Boldak,” the report said citing IB documents, “to target wanted/prominent Sikh personalities in Pakistan”.
The report also cited a Pakistani intelligence assessment to suggest that two Sikh activists living in Lahore and Islamabad were on the R&AW’s radar this summer, identifying one of the two as Lakhbir Singh Rode, a “prominent Sikh separatist leader living in Pakistan since the 1990s who has long been accused of terrorism by India’s government”.
Rode, the nephew of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who was the face of Sikh separatism in the 1980s, is the chief of the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) which Indian authorities suspect has been working in collusion with the ISI. He is wanted in connection with multiple terror attacks and for his alleged role in narco terrorism in Punjab, as also the smuggling of arms and ammunition into the state from neighbouring Pakistan.
The report added that Rode is living in Lahore and was described in a Pakistani intelligence document as having already been surveilled by Indian intelligence agents at a housing complex and gurudwara in the city. Information about his residence and the gurudwara he frequents are included in the report, apparently handed over by the Indian government to Pakistan as part of a demand to turn him over.
As reported by ThePrint, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, leader of the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), was shot dead by two unidentified bike-borne men in Lahore in May this year.
At the time, it was not clear who was behind the killing but the same modus operandi was seen in action when Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) leader Harmeet Singh, infamously known as “Happy PhD”, was shot dead in Lahore in January 2020.
Giving details, sources in the Indian security establishment had then said that Panjwar was understood to have been in the crosshairs of Pakistan’s ISI in recent years.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)