New Delhi: Razaullah Nizamani Khalid, also known as Abu Saifullah Khalid, a senior Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative and the mastermind of the 2006 attack on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in Nagpur, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Pakistan’s Sindh province on Sunday, officials said.

Khalid, who once headed LeT’s operations from Nepal in the early 2000s, was involved in several terror attacks in India. He operated under various aliases, including Vinode Kumar, Mohammed Salim and Razaullah.

According to officials, Khalid left his residence in Matli on Sunday afternoon and was gunned down near a crossing in Badin, Sindh. Local reports from Sindh suggest he was declared brought dead at a hospital, with some reports hinting at personal enmity as a possible motive.

Who was Abu Saifullah Khalid?
A close associate of LeT commander Abu Anas, Abu Saifullah Khalid was the key planner of the 2006 Nagpur attack on the RSS headquarters, in which security forces neutralised all three attackers. He was also involved in the 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, which claimed the life of IIT professor Munish Chandra Puri and injured four others. The attackers managed to flee, and Abu Anas—who was later chargesheeted—remains absconding.

Khalid also masterminded the 2008 attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, where seven personnel and a civilian were killed. The assailants escaped under the cover of darkness.

In the mid-2000s, Khalid was in charge of LeT’s Nepal module. His responsibilities included recruitment, financial and logistical support, and facilitating cross-border movement of operatives. After the module was exposed by Indian intelligence agencies, he returned to Pakistan and continued working with LeT and Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) leaders, including Yusuf Muzammil, Muzammil Iqbal Hashmi, and Muhammad Yusuf Taibi.

He was later tasked with recruiting fresh cadres and collecting funds for LeT from the Badin and Hyderabad districts of Sindh.