New Delhi: India on Thursday, January 25, strongly rejected Pakistan's assertion of evidence implicating Indian agents in the targeted killings of two Pakistani citizens on its soil, dismissing it as "false and malicious anti-India propaganda".

At a media conference in Islamabad, Pakistan foreign secretary Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi said that India was running a campaign of “extra-territorial and extra-judicial killings” and had set up a “sophisticated international set-up spread over multiple jurisdictions”.

Pointing to the allegations made by Canada and the United States last year, the Pakistani diplomat said that the “Indian network of extra-judicial and extra-territorial killings has become a global phenomenon”.

Qazi said that investigation had found “credible evidence” linking Indian agents, identified as Yogesh Kumar and Ashok Kumar Anand, with the killing of Muhammad Riaz in September 2023 and Shahid Latif in October 2023.

Within a couple of hours, India’s Ministry of External Affairs dismissed the Pakistani allegations. “We have seen media reports regarding certain remarks by Pakistan Foreign Secretary. It is Pakistan’s latest attempt at peddling false and malicious anti-India propaganda,” said MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.

He asserted that Pakistan has long been known worldwide as “the epicentre of terrorism, organised crime, and illegal transnational activities”.

“India and many other countries have publicly warned Pakistan cautioning that it would be consumed by its own culture of terror and violence. Pakistan will reap what it sows. To blame others for its own misdeeds can neither be a justification nor a solution,” said the spokesperson.

The Pakistan foreign secretary alleged that Indian agents “recruited, financed and supported criminals, terrorists and unsuspecting civilians to play defined roles in these assassinations”. He said that the “evidence” was confessions from the alleged hitmen and money transfers into their accounts.

He noted that Indian media and social media accounts promptly celebrated the killing of the two men as “successful retribution against enemies of India and projected their capacity to carry out these illegal acts”.

While Qazi referred to a Muhammad Riaz, Indian media had reported last September about the killing of Riyaz Ahmad, a Lashkar-e-Toiba member, at Rawalkot in September 2023. Latif, a member of Jaish-e-Mohhammed and described as a mastermind of the terror attack on the Pathankot air base, was gunned down in a mosque at Sialkot in October.

Qazi additionally connected the killings in Pakistan to a perceived pattern of purported actions by Indian agents in Canada and the US. “The killing of a Sikh leader in Canada is just one example of India's global operations,” he said.

“India must be held accountable internationally for its blatant violation of international law. India’s assassination of Pakistani nationals on Pakistani soil is a violation of its sovereignty and a breach of the UN charter,” Qazi asserted, adding that Pakistan reserved the right to approach the International Court of Justice and other fora.

Last September, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had said there was “credible” intelligence of Indian government agents being behind the shooting of a Canadian citizen, Harpreet Singh Nijjar.

In November, US federal prosecutors announced a potential connection between the killing of Nijjar and the thwarting of a plot to assassinate a Canadian-American Khalistani supporter in New York through an unsealed indictment.

An Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, currently in Czech custody, was accused of hiring a hitman, who was actually an undercover operative, on the instructions of an Indian government agent to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, a lawyer for Sikhs for Justice, a group banned in India.

While India had angrily dismissed the accusations by Canada, a top-level committee was established to investigate the allegations raised by the United States.

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