KARACHI: It was an ordinary summer day in the sleepy little town of Matli in district Badin surrounded with lush green paddy fields amid heavily humid air, when a well-reputed social activist Razaullah Nizamani was gunned down in May as he rode to work.
Three assailants, also riding a motorbike, shot Nizamani multiple times and escaped.
The killing came as a shock for the town whose crime rate is negligible and killing is a rare event.
Razaullah Nizamani, 50, alias Saifullah was a well-known social worker of the area and president of the Markazi Muslim League (MML). In the past, he is also believed to be associated with the Kashmir liberation movement.
Nizamani had long been playing an active role in reformative and welfare activities and propagation of faith. When investigators gleaned the background of the slain Nizamani and connected the dots, they found a pattern similar to what they have seen in previous killings taken place with intervals.
Despite being exposed by the Canadian government for its covert operations on Canadian soil by killing Sikh activists, RAW seems to continue to carry out its clandestine operations in Pakistan.
Through its covert operations in Pakistan, India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has assassinated over half a dozen people in recent years, who were somehow related to the Kashmiri liberation movements in the past.
“The latest killing of Matli, bears all the hallmarks of a RAW hit,” a senior investigator requesting anonymity told Hum News English.
Evidence of RAW’s involvement has been found in around half a dozen killings that have taken place in Sindh during the course of the last few years, the officer went on to add.
Luring Pakistani youth
The RAW operatives, who are stationed in UAE, Thailand and South Africa, focus on Pakistani labour class profiling semi-literate men, to execute their plan.
A few years ago, they targetted Akram*, who hailed from Umarkot and was earning equivalent to around 45,000 PKR in UAE. The operatives took Akram* for lunch and introduced themselves as representatives of an NGO working on heroin eradication and offered him a job back home with double the salary he was getting in UAE, Senior Officer of Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Raja Umar Khattab investigation told Hum News English.
Akram’s job description was to make videos and photographs of the drug addicts who are present in different parts of the city. His employers used to do different taskings asking them to go to Sohrab Goth and shoot drug addicts or any other part of the city, the officer went on to add.
After some time, the handlers asked Akram to co-hire a policeman he knew and take him along on the assignment.
Akram* was then given a task to visit a man who had a shop in Baloch Colony area. This man was described as a drug supplier, and Akram* somehow managed to take photos and record his voice during a phone call, posing if he booked a ride. Though the handlers had asked for a video call, that couldn’t take place; he shared the voice clip instead with the handlers.
The investigator also suspected that the RAW operatives must have had some old voice recording of the victim and they wanted to match the new clip with it to confirm the identity.
Finally, after a gap of a few months, Akram* was told by his handlers that a new representative will visit him and he should guide him to the drug supplier. Turned out that the new representatives were three Afghan nationals who worked as contract killers, and ended up assassinating the victim. Before the local authorities could determine the background of the victim who got killed and reach some conclusion, the news of the killing broke on the Indian social media news sites, the officer explained.
The victim was later identified as Zahid Akhund alias Zahoor Mistry; he was killed in 2022 and was accused by Indian government of his involvement in Hijacking of Air India flight. He was keeping a very low profile life in the Baloch Colony neighbourhood of Karachi for years, but he was traced and tracked by the Indian intelligence.
The assailants were arrested leading to Akram* being rounded up alongside his associate, an on-duty policeman.
The arrests revealed the entire trail of how the killing was managed by the RAW operatives.
Now languishing in jail, Akram* and the police officer had no clue how they were being used by the intelligence agency of an enemy country, until it was too late.
Systematic take down
Citing another incident, Khattab told Hum News English that in 2023, the RAW operatives through their local handlers used the services of a delivery rider to establish the identity of their target.
The rider went to the house of the intended target and delivered a watch, which they had not ordered. Meanwhile, the rider visited the house thrice and managed to photograph the victim.
The victim, this time a certain Syed Khalid Raza was gunned down on February 26, 2023 near his house.
Khalid was a migrant from Indian-held Kashmir and was also believed to have been involved in Kashmiri liberation movement, but for the last many years he was running a school.
Days before Khalid’s killing, another Kashmir migrant and former Hizbul Mujahideen commander, Bashir Pir alias Imtiaz Alam, was targetted on February 20, 2023 when he was leaving a mosque in Rawalpindi after Maghrib prayers.
Months later, Kashmiri migrant Muhammad Riaz alias Abu Qasim was taken down on September 8, 2023 during Fajr prayers at a local mosque in Rawalakot, AJK.
The fourth target was another Kashmiri freedom fighter and former commander of Harkatul Mujahideen, Shahid Latif, who was also killed while offering Fajr prayers at a mosque in Sialkot.
Syed Khalid Raza’s funeral prayers, held near his residence in Karachi, were attended by Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Karachi chief Hafiz Naeem, office-bearers of the private schools association and other notables. Addressing the mourners, Naeem said that Raza’s killing was not an “ordinary incident”.
He said that “foreign hostile agencies” could not do anything without the “facilitation of locals” and called for the elimination of such facilitators. The Pakistan investigators are not sure as to why the Indian intelligence is focused on eliminating people who have disassociated themselves from their past activities for the last 30 to 40 years and pose no real threat to them.
RAW recruits and trains assassins
Besides the murderers of Syed Khalid Raza and Zahoor Mistri, Pakistani law enforcement also apprehended killers of other former Kashmiri freedom fighters one by one from various parts of Pakistan, including Karachi.
Furnishing details of the “sophisticated and sinister” Indian campaign of killings inside Pakistan, Foreign Secretary Syrus Qazi told media during a press conference in January 2025 that RAW recruited assassins using social media, talent spotters and fake Daesh accounts.”
“They recruited, financed and supported criminals, terrorists and unsuspecting civilians to play defined roles in these assassinations,” he added.
He informed that two assassin responsible for the killings of Abu Qasim, and Shahid Latif were arrested while attempting to flee Pakistan.
Muhammad Umair, who killed Shahid, was arrested on October 12, 2023, while Abu Qasim’s murderer, Muhammad Abdullah Ali was taken into custody on September 15, 2023 from Karachi airport.
Referring to a detailed investigation and the confessional statements of the assassins, the secretary revealed that RAW agents Yogesh Kumar, and Ashok Kumar Anand had recruited and trained them.
The secretary said “the assassination of citizens on Pakistani soil was not only a violation of the country’s sovereignty but also a breach of the UN Charter”, and called for India’s accountability on an international level for its “blatant violation of international law.”
Story behind two brothers killed in Rawalakot ‘encounter’
In 2016, Pakistan arrested Kulbushan Yadav, who is believed to be a commander in the Indian navy and a RAW agent. Operating under the alias of Husain Mubarak Patel was caught by Pakistan in Balochistan province.
Bearing an Indian passport with fake ID, he gave a statement documenting his directives to disturbed the peace in Balochistan and support the separatist movement financially, logistically and by training.
Initial interrogation suggested his involvement in major terrorist attacks in Balochistan.
*Name withheld