Operation Phantom was a covert operation executed by India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence agency to assassinate the leaders of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba jihadist group in retaliation for the 2008 Mumbai attacks and to prevent further terrorist attacks on Indian soil.
The operation was conceived by RAW officer Samit Mishra following the capture of LeT sleeper cell agent Mousa Hamid, whose interrogation revealed that Lashkar-e-Taiba was planning another attack in India, but with an uncertain target or timing. Mishra persuaded RAW director Sabyasachi Roy to oversee a highly secretive operation to eliminate the LeT leadership and thus prevent a terrorist attack from being carried out; as the Indian government feared that such an operation would lead to war with Pakistan, Roy and his team were forced to conduct the operation in secrecy. They recruited the dishonorably discharged Indian Army lieutenant Daniyal Khan to carry out the mission and redeem his lost honor; Khan partnered with the London-based Blackwater security consultant Nawaz Mistry to hunt down the terrorist leaders around the world. The first assassination was that of Sajid Majid, who had given step-by-step instructions to the Mumbai attackers while watching the news coverage of the event. Khan staged Majid's assassination to appear to be an accidental death caused by a gas leak at his London apartment, but the Indian media began to speculate that Majid was murdered.
Six months later, Khan arrived in Chicago, Illinois to assassinate the imprisoned LeT operative David Headley, hiring a stuntman, Matthew Brody, to fake his falling death at Khan's hands in order for Khan to be sent to the state correctional facility where Headley was held. Khan was unsuccessful in his attempt to poison Headley with a toxic battery in the shower, but the severely injured (and thought-to-be-dead) Headley was transferred to a maximum-security prison in Texas, where he would be harmless to India. Unaware of Headley's inconsequential survival, Khan was released from prison after Brody resurfaced unharmed, and Khan was able to attract the attention of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) intelligence agency by telling the Pakistani High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Shahriyar Beg, that he had evidence that Sajid Majid was murdered.
The ISI agreed to set up a meeting between him and the LeT in Syria, where Lashkar fighters had been fighting alongside jihadist rebels, in order for Khan to present his evidence; he was promised a meeting with the LeT leadership in Pakistan if he turned out to be telling the truth. He infiltrated Syria via Lebanon, where Mistry had moved in order to join Blackwater in providing security to refugee camps (and secretly arming Syrian Opposition rebel groups), only to be betrayed, tortured, and interrogated on his arrival at the LeT headquarters in Qudsaya, Rif Dimashq Governorate. Mistry and a team of Blackwater mercenaries launched a rescue mission from a refugee camp on the border after the taxi driver who had taken Khan into Syria reported Khan's kidnapping, and they arrived just in time for a Syrian Arab Army counterattack to throw the jihadists into confusion. They rescued Khan and succeeded in killing the LeT commander Mukul Qureshi, who was not a target on the list, but who intended to send a videotaped confession from Khan to the ISI to prove his true intentions. Qureshi was killed before the video could be sent, but he mentioned Khan's name before Khan shot him dead. The ISI deduced that Khan was responsible, so they retaliated against India by assassinating the Indian diplomat Rajan Sampat in Amman, Jordan in what appeared to be another "gas leak"; the media drew parallels between Sampat's death and Majid's death, and even the Indian government began to grow suspicious of RAW's involvement in the recent string of murders.
The cautious Roy then decided to terminate Khan and Mistry's mission, but they defied orders and went to Pakistan disguised as Red Cross workers, basing themselves from a hotel in Lahore. They worked with RAW's agent in the city, eatery owner Khalid Middat, to plan the double assassinations of LeT leaders Haaris Saeed and Sahabuddin Umavi, the last two targets on their list. With the help of the nurse Amina Bi, whose son Arshad Bi had been manipulated into becoming a Lashkar suicide bomber, Khan and Mistry were able to have Umavi accidentally poisoned to death by Bi's boss, Umavi's private doctor; at the same time, Khan attempted to assassinate Saeed with an exploding microphone at a crowded political rally. By then, the ISI had caught wind of the duo's plans after identifying Khan as "Jude Rosario" (the man accused of attempting to murder Headley) with the help of the American CIA, who brutally tortured Matthew Brody (including shooting him in the leg) until he revealed his and Khan's arrangement; he was presumably killed shortly after. The ISI attempted to evacuate Saeed before he could be killed as well, but Khan was able to chase him down in a stolen police Toyota, slam into the side of Saeed's truck (violently flipping it in the process), and execute Saeed with an AK-47 before running away from the impending explosion of his vehicle.
The enraged ISI chief Haider Khalol ordered for the land and sea borders to be closed, the latter after tracking down the route of Middat, Khan, and Mistry's car to Karachi with the reluctant help of Middat's tortured coworker Shehzad Gulati. By then, Roy was forced to confess the RAW's responsibility for the assassination campaign to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but, at Mishra's behest, he falsely claimed that Khan would confess India's role in the campaign to the Pakistanis unless the Indian Navy was sent in to pick up Middat, Khan, and Mistry when a RAW-associated fishing boat captain took them out of Karachi and to international waters. Middat was killed during a shootout with Pakistani police at a security checkpoint outside of Karachi after the police identified the car's license plates, and Khan and Mistry nearly escaped aboard the fishing boat before a Pakistan Navy ship intercepted them on the ISI's orders. They were forced to jump ship and hide underwater as the ship was searched, but the Pakistani sailors noticed their air bubbles and were ordered to shoot at them. After the Pakistanis ceased fire, they returned to Karachi with the fishing boat, and Khan died of his injuries before the Indian Navy submarine could pick him and Mistry up. Mistry was thus the sole survivor of the mission, and she was rescued by Mishra and the Indian Navy and taken back to Mumbai. The operation gutted LeT, which was unable to carry out any notable terrorist attacks for years to come due to the elimination of several of its high-ranking leaders; it was also seen as justice for the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks.
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