Post Nijjar and Pannun fiascos, can India continue without parliamentary oversight for intelligence services?

Ghar mein ghus kar marenge is a great movie dialogue. It is an even better election slogan. But can the demands of democracy and the delicate balance of international relations afford India such bravado, asks Ravi Nair.

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NEW Delhi Chatterati loves to play Chinese Whispers. The most popular one presently is, "If the US can do targeted killings outside their country, why can't we do it?"

Targeted killings internally, within India by official agencies, or by using proxies, are an age-old practice. Too well documented to need reiteration here. Euphemistically called 'encounter deaths', they are endemic.

Targeted killings of non-Indian nationals

There is credible information in the public domain about the killing of a pro-Chinese Marxist tribal leader in Bangladesh in 1983 by a pro-Indian tribal leader now living in India.

Operation Leech

On February 11, 1998, an Indian tri-services detachment gunned down in cold blood six of the leadership of the nascent Arakan-based Rakhine armed group fighting the Myanmar junta. They were gunned down on Landfall Island of the Andaman group of islands.

The Rakhine now have the Arakan Army (AA), one of the more formidable armed groups fighting the Myanmar junta.

The justification

One veteran Indian journalist, known to enjoy the ear of intelligence agencies, seemed to justify the targeting of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.