Pakistan, June 10 -- The arrest of five suspected RAW-linked operatives in Muzaffarabad amid fresh tensions in Azad Jammu and Kashmir has reopened a larger question for Pakistan's security establishment: how far has India's covert playbook shifted from conventional espionage to digitally managed assassinations, local recruitment and instant media exploitation?

The question has acquired new urgency after the killing of a 30-year-old Kashmiri-origin educationist, Hamza Burhan, who was shot outside a private college in Muzaffarabad on May 21. Burhan, who had fled Indian-occupied Pulwama in January 2018, had built a civilian life in AJK as a school principal, married into a Kashmiri migrant family and was father to a young child.

According ...