Lahore: Pakistani authorities are investigating the shooting death of Amir Sarfaraz alias Tamba, who had been acquitted of killing accused Indian national Sarabjit Singh in a Lahore prison in 2013, a police official said on Sunday. This was the first time when Pakistan authorities acknowledged the spree of killings incident and started an investigation. Pakistan has previously accused India’s intelligence agency of being involved in killings inside Pakistan, saying it had credible evidence linking two Indian agents to the deaths of two Pakistanis last year– a claim that New Delhi rejected.

The man who died in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday was Amir Tamba. He was a suspect in the death of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian national who was convicted in a false case of spying in Pakistan and handed a death sentence in 1991. But Singh died in 2013 after inmates attacked him in a Lahore prison. His fate inflamed tensions between the two South Asian nuclear-armed rivals.

Tamba and a second man went on trial for Singh’s death but were acquitted in 2018 due to lack of evidence.

Case registered against “unknown men”

The deputy inspector general of police in Lahore, Ali Nasir Rizvi, said gunmen entered Tamba’s house and shot him. They fled the scene on a motorbike. Officials from Pakistan’s army and intelligence agency reached the site and removed Tamba’s body, taking it to the city’s Combined Military Hospital. Rizvi said a case had been lodged against unidentified assailants but gave no further information about the case, including a possible motive for the attack.

There was slow coverage of Tamba’s death in Pakistan’s media. However, Indian outlets were quick to report on the shooting. There was no immediate comment from the Indian authorities.

Singh was falsely arrested in 1990 for his role in a series of bombings in Lahore and Faisalabad that killed 14 people. His family said he was innocent. His sister, Dalbir Kaur, had fought a tough long battle to secure the release of his brother from the neighbouring nation but failed. She later died in 2022 in Amritsar. 

The mystery behind “unknown men”

It is worth mentioning the latest killing of Tamba came at a time when a spree of killings were reported in Pakistan, with all following more or less a similar pattern. Although Pakistan’s security agencies failed to identify the killers, recently, they started blaming Indian officials behind the killings but it did not exhibit any concrete evidence to support the claims.

Recently, a UK media report also alleged that the Indian spy agency, RAW, was involved in the multiple killings of Pakistani nationals, whom New Delhi dubbed as “wanted terrorists”. Citing a few officials from Pakistan, the report alleged India’s involvement but the London-based media too did not offer any proof.

India, on the other hand, rejected the claims and tagged them as “baseless allegations”. However, later in a podcast, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said: “India would enter Pakistan if terrorists ran away to the neighbouring nation after carrying out terror strikes in the country.” A similar statement was also echoed by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who said “terrorists don’t execute operations with rules, they why India’s response should be abide by the rules”.

(With inputs from agency)

Also Read: Pakistan: Amir Sarfaraz, killer of Sarabjit Singh, shot dead by ‘unknown’ men in Lahore