As Pakistan pins murder-for-hire plots on India in pre-election ‘signal’ to Modi, is their fragile peace at risk?

Name: Canadian PM says authorities investigating ‘credible’ links to India on Sikh leader’s murder
Uploaded: 2024-01-30T11:00:19.000Z
Duration: 3 min 15 s
Description: Canadian PM says authorities investigating ‘credible’ links to India on Sikh leader’s murder

Islamabad has vowed to publicise its investigations into 12 ‘Indian-sponsored’ assassinations that ‘fit the pattern’ of cases in Canada and the US

Memories of cross-border strikes India carried out before its last polls in 2019 are still fresh, observers say, and Pakistan wants to avoid a repeat

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Kashmiri women march during an anti-India protest rally in Karachi in August 2019. Photo: AFP

Tom Hussain

Published: 7:00pm, 30 Jan 2024

Pakistan has accused perennial enemy India of carrying out extrajudicial killings on its territory, amid rising concern that a recent escalation of their decades-long proxy war could undermine a cold peace that has held for the last three years.

The allegations follow last year’s revelations about purported Indian murder-for-hire plots in the United States and Canada – and come as analysts say New Delhi is increasingly “committed to more muscular approaches to targeting threats abroad”.

Having previously remained silent about the targeted killings of anti-India jihadists in Pakistan last year, Islamabad now plans to publicise its investigations into 12 such assassinations, foreign secretary Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi said on Thursday – accusing Delhi’s intelligence services of hiring hitmen to eliminate its enemies.

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Canadian PM says authorities investigating ‘credible’ links to India on Sikh leader’s murder

“These cases reveal the growing sophistication and brazenness of Indian-sponsored terrorist acts inside Pakistan,” Qazi said, adding that the killings “fit the pattern of similar cases” in Canada and the United States.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September last year that there was “credible” evidence Indian operatives were involved in the June murder of Vancouver-based Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

In November, the US Justice Department brought charges against an Indian national who had tried to hire an undercover agent to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a prominent New York-based Sikh separatist.

Qazi’s allegations came a day after Pakistan’s army chief of staff General Asim Munir – the country’s most powerful official by far – took a hardline stance on diplomatic reconciliation with India.