New Delhi: The Foreign Ministry has denied allegations in a report by the UK daily The Guardian that accuses India of conducting targeted killings in Pakistan to eliminate terrorists. The ministry has called it "false and malicious anti-India propaganda" and quoted Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, who had said recently that targeted killings in other countries were "not the government of India's policy".
The ministry's denial was mentioned in the report by The Guardian, which claims that Delhi "has implemented a policy of targeting those it considers hostile to India".
The Guardian report, claiming that upto 20 such assassinations were carried out by the Indian intelligence agency RAW since the Pulwama attack of 2019, cites evidence supplied by Pakistan and interviews with intelligence officials from both sides of the border.
Quoting an un-named Indian official, The Guardian claimed that India had drawn inspiration from Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and Russia's KGB -- which have been linked to extrajudicial killings on foreign soil -- and the killing of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
The report claimed Pakistani authorities have produced documents about some of the killings, which could not be independently verified. It said Pakistani officials also claimed that the killings were orchestrated by sleeper cells of Indian intelligence established in the UAE.