Is India behind targeted killings in Pakistan? What we know

Pakistani officials tell Al Jazeera at least eight killings could be linked to India. New Delhi rejects these charges.

Islamabad, Pakistan — Since June 2021, Pakistan has tracked and accused Indian intelligence agencies of multiple attempts — some successful — at assassinating individuals New Delhi views as terrorists sheltered by Islamabad.

On Thursday, British newspaper The Guardian backed those claims, three months after Pakistan’s government formally levelled similar allegations against India.

But in the murky world of spies and contract killers, where little can be confirmed independently, New Delhi has long denied its role in extraterritorial assassinations — even as allegations against it have mounted, including from the United States and Canada, friends of India.

Here’s what’s known about the alleged killings in Pakistan, what remains limited to accusations, and the implications of the allegations.

Pakistani security officials speaking to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity acknowledged at least six killings in 2023, and two in the year before, as those that they believe were carried out by a “hostile intelligence agency” — code for India’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing — and were investigating.

In January this year, Pakistan’s top diplomat in a news conference also claimed that there is “credible evidence” of Indian involvement in killings in the country.

“These are killings-for-hire cases involving a sophisticated international set-up spread over multiple jurisdictions,” Foreign Secretary Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi told reporters on January 25 in Islamabad.

Qazi specifically mentioned the murders of Muhammad Riaz, killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in September 2023, and Shahid