report in The Times of India, Sept 29, 2023
NEW DELHI: The killing of Maulana Ziaur Rahman, a cleric, at a park in Karachi’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar would have attracted the attention of his kin, his friends and those convinced of his religious piety. In Pakistan, several of the clerics are engaged in extra-religious gigs with some of them getting regularly bumped off for various reasons.
The assassination of Rahman by two motorcycle-borne unidentified gunmen who pumped multiple bullets into their target when he was on his daily evening stroll would not have worried Pakistan’s military-industrial complex, but for a few reasons.
Ziaur Rahman was a Lashkar operative and his killing almost mimicked the murder of another asset of theirs – Paramjit Singh Panjwar, chief of Khalistan Commando Force. Panjwar, wanted by India for terrorism, was killed by unidentified gunmen when he was out for a morning walk near his residence in Lahore in May.
The similarity in the two killings has led the ISI, Pakistan’s spy agency and the choreographer of the terror directed against India, to put around a dozen of its “assets” in “safe houses”, said sources who have been tracking the developments. Perhaps, the precaution would have been deemed even more necessary because of the killings of two other Laskhar operatives – Abu Qasim Kashmiri in Rawalkot and Qari Khurram Shehzad in Nazimabad – in September, sources said.
Rahman’s killing was reported on September 12. Local police had found 11 cartridges, some of those from 9mm calibre. He was working as an administrator of a seminary named Jamia Abu Bakar, which was a front for his terrorist activities, sources said.
Pakistan police in their press release described the murder as a ‘terrorist attack’ indicating the role of home grown “militants”. A gang rivalry is also being probed as one of the possible motives for what Pakistan Police has deemed to be a “targeted killing”.
Rahman’s assassination follows a series of attacks on religious preachers in Karachi, all of them associated with terror groups through ISI and involved in radicalising youths and bringing them to the launch pad from where they are unleashed on India.
Those on what appears to be a growing list include Khalid Raza, formerly associated with Al-Badar Mujahideen, Gulistan-e-Jauhar, the same Karachi neighbourhood where Rahman was to be killed later.
On March 1, Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim, an IC-814 Indian Airlines hijacker, was shot dead in Karachi. The Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist was shot twice in the head by unidentified gunmen from point-blank range.
The series of killings have left Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies and ISI rattled. In the absence of a suspect and unwilling to concede that the killings may have been inspired by inter-gang rivalry, they have been blaming India’s external intelligence agency without any evidence. This, when their own investigation points to involvement of local criminals who were too familiar with the layout of the localities of their victims and detachments of comrades who helped them make good their escape and blend into their communities. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/let-operatives-mystery-killing-in-pakistan-spooks-isi/articleshowprint/104027376.cms
