By Sajid Salamat

Copyright dailytimes

India tirelessly cultivates its image as the world’s largest democracy, a bastion of law and moral leadership on the global stage. Yet this carefully constructed façade is a monumental lie, crumbling under the weight of its own hypocrisy. The recent, damning evidence from the U.S. Department of Justice does not merely accuse; it convicts India in the court of global opinion, exposing a regime that preaches non-violence while practising state-sponsored assassination. This is not a deviation from its principles; it is the revelation of its true nature.

For decades, Pakistan has been a lone voice in the wilderness, warning the world of India’s reckless and violent conduct beyond its borders. These warnings were systematically dismissed, our claims labelled as propaganda. Now, the United States, with its FBI investigations and unsealed court documents, has been forced to confirm what we have always known. The so-called “democratic giant” is in fact a transnational aggressor, running a global murder-for-hire scheme that blatantly violates the sovereignty of its allies and the very international laws it claims to uphold.

Sikh communities in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates live under the threat of India’s long arm.

The evidence is both sickening and precise. In a plot straight out of a spy thriller, an Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, directed a civilian, Nikhil Gupta, to arrange the murder of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh activist, on American soil. This is the same official machinery that orchestrated the brazen killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. This is not diplomacy; it is gangsterism dressed in diplomatic immunity. The conspiracy’s tentacles, reaching into Nepal and Pakistan, prove this is a systematic policy, not a rogue operation. Hundreds of WhatsApp messages and emails form a digital paper trail leading directly to the heart of the Indian state.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. India’s representatives stand at podiums in the United Nations, sanctimoniously lecturing the world on morality and international law, while their intelligence agencies plot extrajudicial killings in the backrooms. They signed the UN Charter, only to spit on its core principle forbidding interference in sovereign states. They are signatories to human rights treaties that they actively subvert by hunting down activists under the protection of friendly nations. This is not the behaviour of a responsible power; it is the behaviour of a rogue state.

The scope of this terror campaign is global. Sikh communities in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates live under the threat of India’s long arm. By turning the cities of its partners into hunting grounds, India has shown a profound contempt for the sovereignty of every nation that dares to offer refuge to its critics. It is a country that acts as if its own sense of grievance grants it a license to kill, placing it above the law.

Pakistan’s position has been utterly vindicated. The U.S. Department of Justice has now provided the receipts for our claims, exposing India’s brutal hypocrisy for the entire world to see. The “largest democracy” is a myth. The reality is a nation that uses the language of law to mask the actions of a thuggish regime, employing terror as a standard tool of foreign policy.

The world must now decide. Will it continue to do business with a state that believes it has a license to kill on foreign soil? Will it reward this behaviour with strategic partnerships and trade deals, or will it finally impose real consequences? India’s democracy is a performance. Its transnational killings are its reality. The mask has fallen, shattering on the hard evidence of a U.S. courtroom, and the world can no longer pretend it doesn’t see the bloody face beneath.

The writer is MS Research Scholar at IIUI, a freelance content writer and a columnist.