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Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Monday voiced suspicions over India’s involvement in the murder of Amir Sarfraz Tamba, who allegedly killed Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh at Kot Lakhpat jail in 2013.
A day earlier, Tamba was critically injured after two armed men forcefully entered his home in Lahore’s Islampura area and opened fired before fleeing the scene. The wounded Tamba was rushed to a local hospital, where he is being treated.
Addressing a press conference, the interior minister noted authorities had determined India’s involvement in four murders inside Pakistan prior to the attack on Tamba. “Police are investigating the firing on Amir Tamba and so far, they suspect India is behind it,” he said. “India was involved in four other murder incidents on a similar pattern as well. However, it will not be suitable to say anything until the investigation is complete,” he added.
In April 2013, Tamba and Mudasir Munir allegedly attacked Sarabjit Singh—sentenced to death for several bombings that killed 14 people in Lahore and Faisalabad in 1990—with bricks and iron rods in Kot Lakhpat jail. On Dec. 14, 2018, a sessions court in Lahore acquitted Tamba and Munir of all charges and ordered their release after all witnesses retracted their statements.
Naqvi’s statement followed a report published by U.K.’s The Guardian, which alleged that India was involved in the killings of 20 people in Pakistan since 2020 as part of an ongoing policy to eliminate terrorists on foreign soil. Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, who said it was a policy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to kill “terrorists” in Pakistan, seemingly validated the report. Earlier, both the U.S. and Canada had accused India’s RAW of targeting dissidents on their soil.
Also on Monday, the interior minister sought to downplay a recent incident in Bahawalnagar that saw a clash between police and Army personnel following the arrest of a serving Army official. “We cannot take one incident to say that the whole nation is demoralized,” said Naqvi. “The reason for that is because an incident definitely happened and is being investigated but even brothers sometimes fight one another in the same home,” he added.
“I think it should not be such a big issue,” he said and urged the media not to grant it outsized importance.