October 18, 2015•Update: October 20, 2015
By Aamir Latif
KARACHI, Pakistan
Pakistani security agencies have stepped up security for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif following alleged intelligence reports that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence service was plotting to assassinate him, Pakistani officials said Saturday.
“Investigations [of the intelligence reports] have started and the planners of the conspiracy will soon be nabbed,” Mussadiq Malik, a spokesman for Sharif, told reporters this weekend.
“Pakistan is not a banana republic,” he added. “We know how to protect our prime minister.”
According to an intelligence report allegedly issued on Saturday by the Punjab province’s department for home affairs, the Indian intelligence service had hatched a plot to assassinate both Sharif and Hafiz Saeed, chief of the Jamaat ud Dawah group, which was blamed for a string of deadly attacks in Mumbai in 2008 in which over 150 people were killed.
“The [intelligence] report claims that RAW could use banned Pakistani militant outfits, like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan, to attack Sharif and Saeed,” Malik asserted.
The spokesman went on to say that Pakistan would use all forums at its disposal, including the UN, to shed light on the issue once investigations were completed.
New Delhi, meanwhile, has yet to comment on the allegations.
