‘An Eye For an Eye’ in Pakistan and India

Discreet murder and national security

By: Jyoti Malhotra

On April 14 in Lahore, Pakistan, two people knocked on the door of Amir Sarfaraz’s home in Islampura district, and when he opened it, pumped several bullets into him. Sarfaraz was taken to hospital where he died of his injuries. There were no claims or accusations about who killed whom, let alone why, but speculation runs rife. Those who really know, such as people in intelligence, usually don't say.

But a fortnight ago, the London-based Guardian broke an exclusive story reporting on the Indian government’s policy to carry out targeted assassinations abroad against people considered “hostile to India.” The assassinations abroad allegedly began as part of an “emboldened approach to national security after 2019” and have stretched as far afield as Canada, as Asia Sentinel reported on September 22, 2023. Thus the news a day later in India reported the killing of a key underworld figure in Pakistan who had been accused by Indian authorities of killing an Indian in a Pakistani jail back in 2013. It is intriguing to speculate what the connections might be.

In this particular case, Amir Sarfaraz, a drug lord and mafia don whose fondness for real-estate deals was part of local folklore, was accused by Indian intelligence sources of killing Sarabjeet Singh, an Indian national, in 2013. Pakistani authorities had accused Sarabjeet of being an Indian spy and masterminding bomb blasts in Pakistan’s Punjab province in 1990 in which 14 people had died. Sarabjeet was condemned to live out the rest of his life in a Pakistani jail, but was killed in a prison brawl. The name of one alleged prisoner involved in the prison brawl topped that list. Amir Sarfaraz, also believed to be a key leader of the terror group, Lashkar-e-Toiba.

Sarabeet Singh may have reconciled to his fate, except in India-Pakistan ties things are never that simple. In 2013, Sarabjeet’s death was announced within days of the hanging of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri who was trained in Pakistan and played a key role in a 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament which killed 14 including the five terrorists who pulled off the actual attack. Sarfaraz, the alleged killer, meanwhile petitioned that he was innocent and was let off by the state in 2018. His reputation as “Lahore ka asli don,” or the “real don of Lahore” soon became his key identity marker until Sunday, when he was killed by the two assailants who got away clean.

Apart from the fact that Sarfaraz was killed on Sunday in Lahore, nothing else in this story can be confirmed or denied. And yet, no prize for guessing that the credit for Sarfaraz’s death will likely accrue to the Modi government, which has made a national fetish out of protecting its citizenry from dangerous, alien forces. 

In an earlier Gandhian world, such a bloodthirsty point of view would be called “revenge.” The Mahatma even had a chosen phrase from the Old Testament for it: An eye for an eye will make you blind. But in Modi’s India, a rising middle-class would rather thump its collective chest in the belief that it is a much stronger power today, on par with Israel at least – a country that has always been a role model.

Certainly, the coincidences are far too many to ignore. One day after the Guardian story, India’s defense minister Rajnath Singh told a TV channel that if terrorists attack India, they will get a fitting reply. And if they escape back into Pakistan, Rajnath Singh added, we will follow them there and kill them.

Ghus ke marenge. The phrase in Hindi, the language of the Rajnath Singh interview, means “We will enter your territory and beat the hell out of you.” It sounds far more robust and emphatic in Hindi, especially when you’re only a few days from the first phase of the Indian general election on April 19, and most of the seats in Parliament are from the Hindi-speaking heartland.

In a time when the world is astir with countries invading other ones without proper motive – think Russia invading Ukraine – or when motive exists, the punishment far outdoes the original crime – think Israel bombing Palestinians back to the Stone Age – the so-called “targeted assassination” by Indian intelligence agencies of Pakistani hostiles will likely not provoke a greater international reaction than a raised eyebrow.

Everyone knows what’s going on in the India-Pakistan front – and has been going on for decades. At least since Pakistan launched its “proxy war” against India in 1989 by infiltrating armed terrorists into Jammu & Kashmir and carrying out attack after attack in which hundreds of people were killed; and more recently, in 2008, attacking India’s financial capital, Mumbai, with the intent of crashing India’s economy – 175 people are said to have died in that terror strike.

The on-off India-Pakistan relationship has for decades been strained by this single factor. Under the Modi government in the last 10 years, all diplomatic conversation has been halted because India insists that there can be no conversation until Pakistan puts an end to “cross-border terrorism.” Predictably, Pakistan denies it does any such thing, while allegedly continuing to mastermind operations inside India.

One of the reasons for the mass approval of Modi on the national security front is a direct comparison with the previous Congress government, seen to be weak and infirm when dealing with terrorism. When the Mumbai attacks took place, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did nothing – unlike Modi, hot pursuit was just not his style. Moreover, Singh believed it wouldn’t change Pakistani behavior anyway.

In contrast, Modi has not just crossed the Line of Control into Kashmir in 2016, looking for terrorists involved in attacks on an Indian army camp, in 2019 he sent missiles into Pakistan in retaliation against the February attack in Pulwama, near Srinagar, in which 40 soldiers were killed. The missiles were intended for a terrorist camp deep inside that country.

No prizes also for guessing that the Guardian story a fortnight ago, followed by Rajnath Singh’s interview as well as Prime Minister Modi’s own comment on the same lines, days later, at an election rally in Uttarakhand province – one of the top five provinces nationally that sends young men to the armed forces – have been primarily aimed at a domestic audience.

As Modi leads the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the polls again, this assertive rhetoric is being pumped up in the hope that it will bring the BJP back to power.

Significantly, the Guardian story only focused on “targeted assassinations” inside Pakistan. However, India’s relations with Canada have plummeted since the accusation by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the Indian government played a role in the killing of Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar last June.

"Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty," Trudeau told his Parliament in September, according to the BBC. Modi’s government pushed back against Trudeau at the time but backed off when the US charged India of plotting to assassinate a Sikh leader by the name of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun last December. This time around there was a serious egg on the faces of Indian intelligence because the hitman who had been allegedly hired for the job turned out to be a US intelligence informer.

The Modi government has since backed off on the Pannun case, while holding up the Canada side of the accusation. As for the alleged targeted assassinations inside Pakistan, as with the case of Amar Sarfaraz, a no-claim-no-denial policy works well for both sides. Pakistan would certainly be embarrassed to admit it had been caught on the wrong foot. As for India, the strong-arm tactics will surely look good for Modi and his party who can now offer up “proof” – alongside a nod and a wink.

Jyoti Malhotra is the founder-editor of AwaazSouthAsia and a regular contributor to Asia Sentinel. Follow her on Twitter