The Foreign Office (FO) on Friday said that the Indian network of extra-judicial and extra-territorial killings was now a “global phenomenon”.
Speaking at her weekly media briefing in response to journalists’ questions, Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said that the news of Indian involvement in an extrajudicial killing in Canada has shown that India’s network of extra-territorial killings has now gone global.
Pakistan issued the statement only a day after The Guardian detailed how Indian authorities had been targeting people it considered hostile to India in foreign lands.
The report cited intelligence officials from both countries, as well as documents shared by Pakistani investigators, saying they “shed new light on how India’s foreign intelligence agency allegedly began to carry out assassinations abroad as part of an emboldened approach to national security after 2019”.
The FO spokesperson stated that Indian intelligence agency RAW has been actively involved in abductions and assassinations in South Asia, adding that Pakistan has remained a target of a series of targeted killings and espionage by RAW.
She added that in December 2022, Pakistan released a comprehensive dossier providing concrete and irrefutable evidence of India’s involvement in the Lahore attack of June 2021
The attack was planned and executed by Indian intelligence, she said, adding that in 2016, a high-ranking Indian military officer Commander Kulbhushan Yadav confessed his involvement in directing, financing and executing terror and sabotage in Pakistan.
“India’s assassination of a Canadian national on Canadian soil is a clear violation of international law and the UN principle of state sovereignty. It is also a reckless and irresponsible act that calls into question India’s reliability as a credible international partner and its claims for enhanced global responsibilities,” she added.
