The dramatic gunning down of Mufti Qaiser Farooq, a close aide of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed and an Ahle Hadith preacher, in the Sohrab Goth area of Karachi on Saturday has increased the tally in such undercover operations to more than 20. Armed pillion riders sprayed nine bullets of which one killed Farooq instantly, said Raja Umar Khattab of the Counter Terrorism Department.
Farooq, a prominent member of the fundamentalist Jamiat Ulema i Islam (Fazl), had stepped out of the seminary to go to Dera Ismail Khan when he was targetted by unknown persons. Karachi Police has blamed RAW agents for the incident.
Earlier Targets Eliminated
Earlier, Qarri Khurram Rehman of the Deoband school and Maulana Zia ur Rehman of the Barelvi sect were shot dead in similar circumstances on September 6 and 12, respectively. The killers are still at large.
The targeted killing was typical of the at least 20 similar operations that were executed with precision earlier. The targets include self-avowed Khalistani Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a wanted terrorist who was shot dead near a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, on June 18, 2023.
Nijjar had got into his grey Dodge Ram truck in the parking lot of the gurdwara at 8.30 pm when two persons fired 15 shots through the window. The assailants escaped in a silver-colour Toyota Camry of 2008 vintage that was parked a few metres away.
Rayaz Ahmed, alias Abu Qasim, was shot dead by a special locally recruited squad in a mosque in Pakistan occupied Kashmir in September 2023.
Maulana Masood Azhar, who masterminded the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 in 1999 to Khandahar in Afghanistan, would have been blown to bits in a massive blast in 2019 near the madrassa where he was holed up in Peshawar, but for the fact that the bomb blew a tad early. Since then Azhar has not appeared in public.
Dreaded terrorist Bashir Ahmed Peer of the Hizbul Mujahideen was shot dead from close range in Rawalpindi in February 2023, while terror group Al Badr commander Syed Khalid Raza was killed by a single shot in forehead in Karachi in February 2023.
Mysterious Deaths Of Khalistani Extremists
Khalistani Avtar Singh Khanda, who had attacked the Indian High Commission in London and pulled down the Indian Tricolour, died under mysterious circumstances at Birmingham City hospital on Dudley Road on June 15, 2023. Khanda was suffering from blood cancer but his family and friends are convinced that he was given a lethal injection and on Tuesday demanded a “proper” post-mortem. Aijaz Ahmad Ahangar, a Kashmiri terrorist and commander of ISIS, was reportedly killed in Afghanistan’s Kunar province in February 2023. Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim, one of the IC-814 hijackers who had slit passenger Rupin Katyal’s throat, was shot dead in Karachi in March 2022.
Khalistan Commando Force’s Paramjit Singh Panjwar was shot dead in Lahore's Nawab Town neighbourhood by two gunmen in May 2023. The Lahore police are still looking for the assailants.
Lal Mohammed, an ISI agent who specialised in sending counterfeit currency into India to sabotage its economy, was chased and shot dead near Kathmandu last year.
Khalistani terrorist Harwinder Rinda mysteriously died of a “drug overdose” in a Lahore hospital in November 2022. His close aide Happy Sanghera was killed in Italy in an incident that has been projected as a gangland killing. Within 24 hours, Khalistani terrorist Kulwinderjit Singh Khanpuria was flown from Bangkok and his interrogation provided a lot of intelligence about the funding and operations of the Khalistanis.
In June 2021, a car bomber rammed into a police check post in Lahore near the house of Hafiz Saeed. Four people were killed in the blast, while Saeed himself escaped. Indications are that such operations will continue despite what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thinks.
