A Sindh Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) official claimed on Friday that a series of murders carried out in Karachi in the past few months were linked to an “enemy country” and the police are closely examining the matter.

       “This is targeted killing under a planned conspiracy,” Raja Umar Khattab, a senior officer in the CTD, said in a statement.

       While the official did not refer to specific murders or name a country in his statement, the remarks come weeks after the murders of two clerics in separate attacks.

       Ziaur Rehman, the administrator of the Jamia Abi Bakar madrassah in Gulistan-i-Jauhar, was murdered on September 12 and on September 6, Qari Khurram Shahzad, a seminary teacher was fatally shot in North Nazimabad.

       The police had said then that they suspected the involvement of the Indian spy agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). They had said that the murders were ostensibly aimed to incite violence as they coincided with the arrival of the holy month of Rabiul Awwal.

       According to Khattab, the police were carrying closely examining the evidence, and soon the culprits and their accomplices would be tracked down.

       The Karachi police had last week said: “CTD has collected evidence of the incident, while during the preliminary investigation, evidence of the involvement of the intelligence agency of our neighbouring country, RAW, has been found in the incident,” it said, without elaborating further.

       Hostile agencies

       RAW’s involvement was suspected in the killing of a Jamaatud Dawa-linked person in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s Rawalakot area last week.

       Late last month, the Punjab Inspector General (IG) Dr Usman Anwar said that the police had unearthed a “network of hostile intelligence agencies” that were allegedly involved in the recent incidents of blasphemy across the country.

       On August 16, a violent mob of hundreds ransacked and torched nearly two dozen churches and attacked the residences of members of the Christian community and the office of the local assistant commissioner in Jaranwala.

       He said the aforementioned events were a “conspiracy” to “divert attention” from the communal clashes in India’s Manipur state.

       But unlike the Indian state’s response, Anwar continued, Pakistani officials, civil society and scholars helped and supported Christian victims and spoke up against the injustice.

       Karachi police also arrested an alleged Indian spy and his local facilitator in Lyari on August 23.