The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday rejected claims made in two recent reports by The Washington Post that India was allegedly involved in killings in Pakistan and that New Delhi had colluded with Maldivian Opposition in a bid to oust President Mohamed Muizzu.

“Both the newspaper and the reporter in question appear to nurse a compulsive hostility towards India,” ministry Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said. “You can see a pattern in their activities. I leave you to judge their credibility. As far as we are concerned, they have none.”

He added: “On Pakistan, I would like to remind you what [former United States Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton said: You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours.”

The Washington Post claimed on Tuesday that the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency, had allegedly executed a methodical assassination programme to target six terror suspects in Pakistan from 2021 onwards.

The killings in Pakistan were said to bear similarities to alleged plots to assassinate Sikh separatists in the United States and Canada.

One of the alleged killings was that of Zahoor Mistry in 2022. Mistry was said to have murdered an Indian passenger during the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight in 1999.

The Indian intelligence agency may have also been involved in the killing of Shahid Latif, the alleged mastermind of the 2016 Pathankot attack, the newspaper quoted unidentified officials as saying.

The foreign ministry had declined to respond to The Washington Post about the allegations. In the past, Indian authorities have neither confirmed nor denied their role in specific assassinations, but stated that such killings were not the Indian government’s policy.

The report on the alleged killings in Pakistan came a day after the newspaper claimed that Opposition leaders in the Maldives had sought $6 million from India to aid a plot to impeach President Mohamed Muizzu in January 2024.

Opposition leaders had proposed bribing 40 MPs, including those from Muizzu’s People’s National Congress party, to vote to impeach the president, The Washington Post claimed.

They had also allegedly proposed to pay 10 senior Maldivian Army and police officers, and three “powerful criminal gangs”, the newspaper claimed. However, the plot did not materialise and “India did not pursue or finance an attempt to oust him”, according to the report.

New Delhi and Malé were involved in a diplomatic spat in the initial months of Muizzu’s presidency, which began in November 2023. A day after coming to power, Muizzu had also asked India to remove its military presence from the Maldives.

India was the only foreign power with a military presence in the Maldives. A group of Indian defence personnel had been maintaining radar stations and surveillance aircraft in the archipelago. Indian warships also help patrol the Maldives’ exclusive economic zone.

This partnership with Malé was of strategic importance to New Delhi amid its geopolitical competition with China in the Indian Ocean region.

Commenting on the report by The Washington Post on Monday, Maldivian Opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed said that he was “unaware of any serious plot against the president”.

“India would never back such a move, as they always support Maldives’ democracy,” Nasheed said on social media. “India has never dictated terms to us, either.”