Pakistan sees another mysterious high-profile terrorist killing: Who was LeT’s Saifullah Khalid?

A prominent Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist, Razaullah Nizamani Khalid, also known as Abu Saifullah Khalid and identified as the mastermind of the 2006 attack on the RSS headquarters, was killed by three unidentified gunmen in Pakistan’s Sindh province on Sunday.

Khalid used to head the terror operations of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) from Nepal in early 2000s and had many aliases including Vinode Kumar, Mohammed Salim and Razaullah. He was involved in multiple terror attacks in India.

He was shot dead by unidentified assailants near a crossing at Badni in Sindh province when he left his residence on Sunday afternoon.

Who is Abu Saifullah Khalid?

Khalid, a close aide of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Abu Anas, was the mastermind behind the attack on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in Nagpur, where all three attackers were gunned down.

Besides the RSS attack, the Lashkar operative was involved in the Indian Institute of Science terror attack of 2005 in Bengaluru, in which IIT professor Munish Chandra Puri was killed and four others injured.

The terrorists had escaped from the scene. Later, police investigated the case and chargesheeted Abu Anas, who is still at large.

Khalid is believed to have orchestrated the deadly 2008 attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, which left seven personnel and one civilian dead. The attackers managed to flee under the cover of night.

In the mid-2000s, Khalid was appointed head of Lashkar's Nepal module, overseeing recruitment, logistical and financial support, and the cross-border movement of operatives between India and Nepal.

He maintained close coordination with Lashkar’s top "launching commanders"—Azam Cheema, also known as Babaji, and Yaqoob, who served as the group’s chief accountant.

Following the exposure of the Nepal network by Indian security agencies, Khalid fled back to Pakistan. There, he continued working with senior figures from both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawah, including Yusuf Muzammil, LeT’s commander for Jammu and Kashmir, as well as Muzammil Iqbal Hashmi and Muhammad Yusuf Taibi.

Khalid was later assigned by the leadership of LeT and JuD to recruit new members from the Badin and Hyderabad regions in Sindh and to raise funds for the organisation.

According to local media reports in Sindh, Khalid was declared dead on arrival at the hospital after being shot. Some of these reports have suggested that the killing may have stemmed from a personal rivalry.

Expanding list of mysterious killings of terrorists in Pakistan

Khalid's killing is an addition to the growing list of terrorists who have killed mysteriously in Pakistan, particularly over the past few years.

In March this year, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed's close aide Abu Qatal was shot dead by unknown assailants in Jhelum district of Pakistan's Punjab province.

In a similar manner, Shahid Latif, a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist suspected of masterminding the 2016 Pathankot attack, was shot dead in Sialkot in October 2023.

Dawood Malik, a close associate of India’s most-wanted terrorist Maulana Masood Azhar, was gunned down by unidentified attackers in North Waziristan just days before Shahid Latif’s killing.

In a separate incident in September 2023, two assailants on a motorcycle shot dead Maulana Ziaur Rehman in Karachi. He was known for radicalising youth and inciting them to wage jihad against India.

These assassinations hint at deeper power struggles within Pakistan’s terror ecosystem. Some experts suggest that the Pakistani military and intelligence services may be silently purging assets that have become inconvenient liabilities in the face of mounting international pressure, especially from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Western governments demanding accountability for cross-border terrorism.