Desk : Abu Saifullah Khalid, also known as Razzaullah Nizamni — the chief conspirator behind the 2006 attack on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in Nagpur and a top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist — was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Pakistan’s Sindh province on Sunday. Khalid, a long-wanted terrorist by Indian security agencies, was involved in at least three major terror attacks in India. According to officials, he was under the protection of the Pakistani government.
As per news agency PTI, Khalid began leading Lashkar-e-Taiba’s operations from Nepal in the early 2000s and operated under multiple aliases including Vinod Kumar, Mohammad Saleem, and Razzaullah. He had a significant role in multiple terror plots in India. On Sunday afternoon, while he was leaving his residence in Matli, he was gunned down near a crossing in Badin, Sindh. Khalid was a close associate of Lashkar terrorist Abu Anas and the mastermind of the attack on the RSS headquarters.
Apart from the Nagpur attack, Khalid was involved in the 2005 terrorist strike at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, where Professor Munish Chandra Puri lost his life and four others were injured. The attackers had managed to escape the scene. Later investigations led to a chargesheet against Abu Anas, who remains at large.
Khalid was also the mastermind behind the 2008 attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, where seven paramilitary personnel and one civilian were killed. The terrorists escaped under the cover of darkness.
Since the mid-2000s, Khalid headed the LeT’s Nepal module, responsible for recruitment, logistics, funding, and facilitating the cross-border movement of operatives between India and Nepal. After Indian agencies dismantled the module, Khalid fled to Pakistan and continued working with key leaders of LeT and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), including Yusuf Muzammil, Mujammil Iqbal Hashmi, and Mohammad Yusuf Taibi.
In Pakistan, Khalid was tasked with recruiting new cadres and raising funds for LeT operations from the districts of Badin and Hyderabad in Sindh. According to local media reports from Sindh, Khalid was rushed to a hospital after being shot but was declared dead on arrival.
His death marks a significant blow to the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s legacy network of Indian-focused operatives, many of whom had operated under state patronage within Pakistan.