The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s top intelligence agency, has reportedly halted operations at its North American stations for the first time since its establishment in 1968, according to The print.
The move was made in anticipation of pending criminal charges against an Indian national accused of conspiring to kill a pro-Sikh activist in New York.
The US Justice Department said on Wednesday that an Indian government official led a botched plot to kill a Sikh separatist on US soil, announcing charges against a man accused of orchestrating the assassination attempt.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said Nikhil Gupta, 52, worked with the Indian government official, whose responsibilities included security and intelligence, to kill a New York resident who supported a sovereign Sikh state in northern India.
“The defendant conspired from India to assassinate, here in New York, an American citizen of Indian origin who has publicly supported the establishment of a sovereign state for the Sikhs,” said Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan. statement.
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This comes two months after Canada said there were “credible” allegations linking Indian agents to the June killing of a Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a Vancouver suburb, which India has denied.
Responding to the reports, Pakistan’s foreign ministry had said that the news of India’s involvement in an extrajudicial killing in Canada had shown that the country’s “network of extraterritorial killings had now gone global”.
The print his report cited sources as saying that two senior RAW officers were asked to leave their posts in major Western cities earlier this summer, pending a decision by United States prosecutors. He added that RAW was also prevented from replacing its station chief in Washington DC.
“The expulsion of the officers was part of a series of moves intended to signal anger against what the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom saw as violations of the unwritten conventions governing RAW’s operations in those countries,” it said. the exhibition.
He said the officers were RAW’s station chief in San Francisco and his second in command of operations in London.
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The print He said the closure of RAW’s San Francisco and Washington stations, due to the publicly announced ouster of its Ottawa station chief Pavan Rai, left the Indian agency unrepresented in North America for the first time since it was founded in 1968. .
The report said prosecutors in the US alleged that alleged drug trafficker Nikhil Gupta was offered up to $150,000 by a person claiming to be working for Indian intelligence to arrange the killing of an unnamed Khalistan lawyer and activist.
The printciting sources, said in its report that the expulsion of the RAW officer in San Francisco was intended by the Indian government to underline its message that the US would not cooperate with Indian intelligence if the agency continued aggressive operations in the West.
India has complained about the presence of separatist Sikh groups abroad, including in Canada and the United States. The groups have kept alive the movement for Khalistan, or the demand for an independent Sikh state away from India.
Sikh activists were blamed for the 1985 bombing of an Air India Boeing 747 flying from Canada to India that killed all 329 on board.
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