New Delhi: The past year has seen a string of mysterious killings in Pakistan of terrorists wanted by India and others with reported ties to terror outfits, as well as the murder of a suspected Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) operative in Nepal, all following a similar pattern.
The modus operandi includes attacks by unidentified vehicle-borne assailants (usually on motorcycles) who pump multiple bullets into their targets’ bodies. None of the killers has been identified or arrested by Pakistan’s security agencies, although three people were arrested in Nepal in connection with the death of the suspected ISI agent.
ThePrint takes a close look at the killings over the past year.
Bashir Ahmad Peer
Bashir Ahmad Peer alias Imtiyaz Alam, a Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist, was killed on 20 February. Unknown bike-borne men had reportedly opened fire at him from point-blank range near a shop in Rawalpindi.
Two weeks after the killing, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) attached Peer’s properties in Babapora village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara.
He was reportedly the ‘launching chief’ of Hizbul in Pakistan and was involved in smuggling arms and ammunition into Jammu and Kashmir to carry out terror attacks. India had designated him a terrorist in October last year.
Syed Khalid Raza
Six days after Peer’s death, Syed Khalid Raza was gunned down in what the Pakistani police termed a “targeted killing”. While some media reports called Raza an educationist, serving as the deputy director of the Darul Arqam Schools, Karachi region, others linked him to the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) or said he was as former commander of the anti-India terror group al-Badr, which has operated in Kashmir.
Raza, too, was attacked by unknown men on bikes and died after being shot in the head. He was killed near his house, when he was walking to where he had parked his car. The Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army (SRA) — a Sindhi secessionist terror outfit — had reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim
Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim, a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist who reportedly lived under the false identity of ‘Zahid Akhund’, was found dead on 1 March this year. He was reportedly shot dead in Karachi at point-blank range by unidentified gunmen.
Operating under the code name ‘Doctor’, Mistry was one of the five hijackers of Indian Airlines flight IC 814, which was travelling to Delhi from Kathmandu, in 1999. He stabbed and killed one of the hostages, 25-year-old Rupin Katyal, an Indian man who was returning home with his wife after their honeymoon.
The plane had 176 passengers and 15 crew members on board and the hijackers had negotiated the release of Islamist terrorists Masood Azhar Alvi, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar, who were lodged in Indian jails.
Syed Noor Shalobar
Syed Noor Shalobar was killed in March this year by unknown gunmen in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan. Believed to have been an ISKP commander, Shalobar was reportedly involved in recruiting terrorists for launching terror attacks in the Kashmir valley, working with the Pakistan Army and the ISI.
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Paramjit Singh Panjwar
Paramjit Singh Panjwar, alias Malik Sardar Singh, a designated terrorist and chief of the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), known for high-profile killings, was killed on 4 March this year by unidentified gunmen near his house in Lahore.
Panjwar, who was from Punjab’s Taran Taran, joined the KCF in 1986 and moved to Pakistan. He was wanted by the Punjab Police in connection with several murders including that of Major-General B.N. Kumar (retd) in 1988, as well as the killing of the 19 students at Patiala’s Thapar Engineering College in 1989, and abduction and killing of Rajan Bains, the son of the then senior superintendent of police of Batala, in 1989.
He was allegedly involved in providing arms training to Sikh youths in Pakistan and infiltration into India. Panjwar was reportedly working with the ISI and received funds from its sleeper agents abroad, including in the United States.
Sardar Hussain Arain
Sardar Hussain Arain, believed to be an associate of Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed, was gunned down on 1 August this year in Qazi Ahmad town in Sindh’s Shaheed Benazirabad district (formerly Nawabshah district). Reportedly an associate of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Arain was believed to be responsible for the madrasa network of the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) — a ‘charity organisation’ linked to LeT — in Pakistan. The Sindhi secessionist SRA claimed responsibility for the killing.
Abu Qasim Kashmiri
Abu Qasim Kashmiri, alias Riyaz Ahmad — believed to be one of the main conspirators behind the attack in Dhangri, Rajouri district in January this year, in which seven people were killed — was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir on 8 September while praying inside a mosque.
Originally from Jammu’s Poonch district, he is believed to have moved across the border in the 1990s and was reportedly associated with the JuD. Pakistani media reports have, however, said that Kashmiri was associated with the JuD in the past before the organisation was banned in 2019.
Laal Mohammad
Laal Mohammad alias Mohammad Darji, reportedly an ISI agent and supplier of fake notes, was killed in Kathmandu on 19 September this year. He reportedly used to get fake Indian currency notes from Pakistan and Bangladesh and bring them into India.
Media reports said that Mohammad was also involved in providing logistical support for the ISI, and facilitated asylum for other agents. He also reportedly had connections with gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s D-gang.
Calling Mohammad a “businessman”, The Kathmandu Post reported in September that three people, including a 15-year-old boy, had been arrested in connection with the murder.
Ziaur Rehman
Maulana Ziaur Rehman, who was killed by motorcycle borne gunmen in Karachi on 29 September this year, was reportedly a member of LeT. A cleric, Ziaur Rehman was reportedly operating for the terror outfit under the garb of an administrator of a seminary, Jamia Abi Bakar.
Pakistani officials labelled the murder a “terrorist attack” launched by “home-grown militants”, although they also reportedly pointed fingers at India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). Little is known about any role Rehman may have had in terror attacks launched in India.
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Shahid Latif
Shahid Latif, a wanted terrorist associated with the terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), is believed to have been the mastermind of the 2016 attack on the Indian Air Force’s Pathankot Airbase, which resulted in the death of seven security personnel and a civilian. A designated terrorist in India under the UAPA, he was killed on 11 October this year by unidentified gunmen in Pakistan’s Sialkot.
Latif is thought to have had extensive knowledge of Jammu and Kashmir’s topography and focused mostly on Kathua, Samba, and Punjab. He specialised in “infiltration” and drone technology, including providing training, sources in intelligence agencies had told ThePrint earlier.
A resident of Gujranwala in Pakistan, Latif is thought to have built an extensive network while he was in prison in Jammu from 1994 to 2010, and that helped him run his network and operations across the border. Known as a “master infiltrator”, Latif was also allegedly involved in the 2022 April attack in Sunjwan ahead of a visit to Jammu by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has been named by the NIA in both the Pathankot and the Sunjwan attack cases as a conspirator.
Dawood Malik
Dawood Malik, known to be an aide of India’s wanted terrorist Maulana Masood Azhar and reportedly involved in terror activities against India, was shot dead in North Waziristan by unidentified gunmen in October this year. Malik, described as an “elderly tribal” in Pakistani media reports, was believed to be the leader and founder of Lashkar-e-Jabbar, a secretive religious terrorist outfit also known as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
This outfit is reportedly a Sunni Deobandi Islamic terrorist group operating out of Pakistan. It is believed to have carried out multiple attacks including the 2016 attack on a police training centre in Quetta, Balochistan, in which more than 60 people were killed.
Khwaja Shahid
A resident of the Neelum Valley in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Khwaja Shahid, also known as Mia Mujahid, a Lashkar-e-Taiba commander and one of the masterminds of the February 2018 Sunjwan terrorist attack, was abducted on 5 November and found dead — beheaded — near the Line of Control in PoK with torture marks on his body, media reports said.
Six people were killed in the 2018 attack, including five Army personnel. No organisation has claimed responsibility and the identity of the killers is still unknown.
Akram Khan Ghazi
Believed to have been the head of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s recruitment cell and a senior commander of the terror outfit, Ghazi was killed by unidentified assailants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on 10 November. Ghazi was reportedly the head of LeT between 2018 and 2020. He was reportedly involved in recruitment and radicalisation of youths in several batches to launch terror attacks in the Kashmir Valley.
However, Pakistani media reports after his death said that ISKP was behind this killing and that he was not part of LeT. ISKP itself reportedly said in its mouthpiece, Amaq News Agency, that it had Ghazi killed and that he was associated with the Afghan Taliban.
ISKP has long been in conflict with the ruling Taliban, and the latter has in the past announced that it would stop ISKP’s operations and target its leader, Shahab al-Muhajir. ISKP is believed to have launched several terror attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Maulana Raheem Ullah Tariq
Maulana Raheem Ullah Tariq, reportedly a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist, was shot dead by unknown assailants on a bike in Karachi’s Orangi town on 13 November this year. Tariq was reportedly on his way to attend a religious gathering when unknown gunmen opened fire at him.
Tariq is believed to have been a close aide of wanted Masood Azhar. Local media reports cited Pakistan police officials calling this a “targeted killing”.
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