State sponsored assassinations.

Canada has burgeoning trade relations with India. The world was stunned when the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Indian intelligence agencies of being behind the assassination of Khalistan activist and Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar. This event reflected that there has been a cataclysmic change in India's covert-operation policy.

Emulating the USA and Israel, India has begun to 'eliminate' people which it regards as enemies of the Indian state. Israel is believed to be assisting India in honing its covert-assassination skills.

India's 'hard 'policy dovetailed with Ajit Doval's 'offensive-defensive' doctrine, has been on the anvil since 2015 or perhaps a few years earlier. Within the framework of this nouveau 'hard' policy, India crossed Myanmar's border ostensibly to punish 'Naga militants' in 2015.

Recall the 2016 post-Uri-attack surgical strike across the LoC and the 2019 Balakot airstrike after the Pulwama terror attack, the 72-day stand-off in Doklam due to India's intransigence, the confrontations at Galwan and Pangong-Tso due to India's provocations.

The metamorphosis in India's 'soft' policy remained unnoticed by the world community. It appears that India told world leaders 'You better stay mum like you stayed at Mossad or CIA assassinations or renditions'. India's argument is that if the USA and Israel could act as judge, jury and executioner, 'why can't I?'

Like Mossad and the CIA, India, too, gets its targets whetted by a conglomerate of hit men, psychologists, and other technical experts. India collected a wealth of information from the CIA's and Mossad's modus operandi and tactics.

It baffles one's imagination how India managed to plant bombs in seminaries in Pakistan, or kill 'targets' in congested Pakistani cities. Like Mossad, India also has specializsed in use of drugs and poisons to 'eliminate' targets.

It is now common to dub one's adversary a 'terrorist'. Doing so foreclose the possibility of political negotiation, and gives the powerful definer the right to eliminate the 'terrorist'

Those killed in India's covert operations include:

(a) Hardeep Singh Nijjar. He was killed near a gurudwara in Surrey, Canada, by two unknown assailants in June 2023.

(b) Rayaz Ahmed alias Abu Qasim. Shot dead in a mosque in Azad Kashmir in September 2023.

(c) Bashir Ahmed Peer of Hizbul Mujahideen. Shot dead at point-blank range in Rawalpindi in February 2023.

(d) Al Badr commander Syed Khalid Raza. Killed by a single...