Indian Covert Action: pro-Modi media hints at other cases
List includes killings in Italy, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal
Following Canada’s accusation of Indian involvement in the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, there have been a number of suggestions that the killing reflects a broader hardline policy.
The Telegraph reported last month that Prime Minister Narendra Modi favours a ‘more muscular and assertive’ role for India’s foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW).
The agency’s set up means it is difficult to glimpse policy shifts, but there have been reports of bigger budgets and the promotion of operational field staff over those with more analytical backgrounds.1
The Telegraph contrasts this with a more traditional approach described by Dr Dheeraj Paramesha of Hull University:
You don’t have Indian-trained intelligence operatives who are trained assassins, but it would be wrong to consider that Indian intelligence agencies are above and beyond the practice of assassinations, because their way of doing it is to use one group against another group.2
This sounds very similar to the British approach described in Rory Cormac’s Disrupt and Deny, and summed up in Daphne Park’s dictum that ‘they destroy each other. We don’t destroy them.’3
According to Dr Walter Ladwig of King’s College London, there have always been those within R&AW favouring a more direct approach, modelled on Israel’s Mossad.4 Under Modi, this school of thought may have moved into the ascendant.
This raises the question whether there have been other Indian assassination operations like that alleged to have killed Nijjar.
India's Firstpost reported on 20 September that 'since 2019 and especially in the last 24 months, over a dozen of India’s avowed enemies have been killed in their safe havens overseas.'5
Acknowledging that this could be coincidence, reporter Abjihit Majumder, nevertheless suggests that ‘the sheer number of eliminations makes people wonder whether India has embarked on a Mossad-like ‘Wrath of God’ mission.'
Firstpost’s reporting can be sensationalist. It is part of the Reliance Media Group, owned by Modi-supporting billionare Mukeshi Ambani, and there have been concerns about its editorial integrity as a result.6 In the present instance, however, a pro-BJP bias may be as much reason to examine Firstpost’s insinuations as to discount them.
The cases cited by Majumder include incidents in Aghanistan and Nepal, but the greatest number took place in Pakistan, where other Indian press reports claim that assets of the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency are falling victim to gang warfare. A R&AW role in these cases might not be incompatible with the old-school indirect approach.
The Nijjar case was one of three beyond South Asia. Of the others, it is not clear that the death of Avtar Singh Khanda in Britain in June was a killing at all. He died of blood cancer in a Birmingham hospital, though his family have called for an inquest, believing that there were suspicious circumstances.7
The most intriguing case on the list is that of Happy Sanghera, allegedly killed in Italy in November 2022. In September that year, the Punjab Police claimed that Sanghera, alias Harpreet Singh, had helped organise an RPG attack on its intelligence headquarters by an ISI-backed gang.8 Two months later, an alleged Punjab Police source told the Hindustan Times that Sanghera had been killed as an informant on the orders of a Canadian-based member of the same gang.9
A search by Italian officials has so far been unable to confirm the death of a Harpreet Singh or Happy Sanghera in Italy in October/November 2022, although it did turn up a reference to the arrest of a Harpreet Singh in India around 1 October. This individual was, however, reported to be an associate of the Italy-based person of the same name.10
The uncertainty around this case might suggest an element of bravado in the Firstpost list, but if the Modi government’s own supporters are hinting at an assassination policy on this scale, they can hardly blame others for taking Canada’s allegations seriously.
Ben Farmer and Samaan Lateef, Inside the shadowy Indian spy agency at the heart of Canada killing row, Telegraph, 24 September 2023.
Ibid.
Quoted in Rory Cormac, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy, Oxford, 2018, p.238.
Ben Farmer and Samaan Lateef, Inside the shadowy Indian spy agency at the heart of Canada killing row, Telegraph, 24 September 202 3.
Abhijit Majumder, Is R&AW the new Mossad? India’s image turns from ‘soft State’ to hard under Modi and Doval, Firstpost, 20 September 2023.
Indian media fret as conglomerate buys up major news channel, Reuters, 3 August 2014.
Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Dan Sabbagh, Family of Sikh activist calls for inquest into Midlands hospital death, Guardian, 2 October 2023.
Punjab Police PR note, 23 September 2022.
Anil Sharma, A day after Rinda’s death, reports claim his aide Sanghera killed in Italy, Hindustan Times, 20 November 2022.
Punjab Police Arrests ISI Operative, Outlook India, 1 October 2022.