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

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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“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.

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.

“India has not reconciled with the concept of Pakistan, so how can we reconcile with it,” Munir told university students in Islamabad on Wednesday, highlighting the ideological schism that has existed between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan since they were carved out of British colonial India upon independence in August 1947.

“States have to have contingency plans in place and send signals to their adversaries,” he said, citing cross-border “surgical strikes” that Delhi carried out shortly before India’s last general elections.

Sethi said it was obvious that the timing of the press conference by Pakistan’s top diplomat, coming immediately after the army chief’s remarks, was no coincidence.

He also observed that the assassinations had been ongoing for some time, and it was “obvious that India was involved”.

Randhir Jaiswal, spokesman for India’s ministry of external affairs,