Pak reluctant to give visa to KCF chief’s sons, calls murder ‘routine killing’

KCF chief Paramjit Singh Panjwar was shot dead by unrecognised assailants in Pakistan’s Lahore on Saturday. Notably, in 2011, India had handed over a list of fifty most wanted people by Delhi and seeking refuge in Pakistan , which included Panjwar.

The Hindustan Times reported that Pakistan media had on Sunday reported Panjwar’s, one of the most wanted terrorist, as a regular killing of a Pakistani Sikh called Sardar Singh Malik.

According to reports, Panjwar was pumped with bullets fired from a 30 calibre pistol as he took his morning constitutional at Johar Town in Lahore along with his gunman.

Panjwar, along with his guard, was walking in the park at Sun Flower Housing Society in Jauhar Town in Lahore, where he was residing, when the two assailants opened fire at them and fled on a motorcycle, the officer said.

The Pakistani media however, has not mentioned the injured gunman.

The Khalistan votary Panjwar died in abject anonymity, even as Pakistan refuses to grant his sons, settled in Germany, visa to come to Pakistan for their father’s last rites.

View Full Image

Hailing from Punjab’s Tarn Taran district, Panjwar, 63 was involved in drug and weapons smuggling and was designated as a terrorist under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in July 2020.

He joined the KCF in 1986. He later headed this outfit and crossed over to Pakistan. He was based in Lahore and was operating from there. 

Panjwar’s death also scras Pakistan’s blatant reluctance to accept the country that once housed global terrorist Osama-Bin-Laden (the terrorist, according to US Intelligence, was living in Abottabad in extreme close proximity to Pakistan Army base), also has given asylum to fugitives of India. 

Panjwar was accused of drug smuggling, dealing with fake Indian currency, and a list of five dastardly crimes including killing 18 students of Thappar Engineering College, Patiala in cold blood. He was also responsible for trafficking Afghan heroin to the US, UK, Germany, and Canada to raise funds for separatists to target India.

The killing is the latest instance of terror kingpins being targeted outside India. In February this year, Bashir Ahmad Peer, a self-styled commander of the terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Pakistan’s Rawalpindi.

Also in the same month, former commander of Pakistan-based terror outfit Al Badr, Syed Khalid Raza, was killed in a similar manner outside his residence in Karachi while Kashmir-born terrorist Aijaz Ahmad Ahanger alias Abu Usman Al-Kashmiri, who had joined the Islamic State( IS), was reportedly killed in Kunar province of Afghanistan.

Hindustan Times reported that the Khalistani separatist leader’s murder at 6am in the morning on Saturday is an operation being handled by an Army Colonel in the ISI Directorate.