Welcome! I’m Tom Griffin and this is my intelligence history newsletter. Feel free to share this post with the button below.
When Canada accused India of involvement in the killing of Sikh dissident Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year, the response of the Modi government was bullish.
Yet in the following months Canadian concerns about Indian covert action have spread to other countries in the ‘five eyes’ intelligence alliance. In January, it emerged that a number of Sikhs in Britain had received ‘threat to life’ warnings from police. This week came news that the ASIO intelligence agency has approached Sikhs in Australia looking for signs of Indian state activity in the country.
But the most significant development came in November, when US prosecutors identified an un-named Indian Government official as a co-conspirator in the attempted assassination of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US citizen. According to the indictment, an associate in the plot, Nikhil Gupta, admitted to an undercover agent that Singh Nijjar had been one of their targets.
This week Bloomberg reported that India had responded to the US allegations:
India’s investigation into US claims of an attempted murder of a Sikh leader in New York found that rogue operatives not authorized by the government had been involved in the plot, according to senior officials familiar with the matter.
At least one person directly involved in the alleged attempted assassination is no longer working for India’s main spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, the officials said, asking not to be identified because the details of the investigation haven’t been made public.
According to Bloomberg, the former R&AW employee is still working for the Indian government. If accurate, this raises a number of obvious questions.
If the individual was a ‘rogue’ why are they still in a government job, rather than facing prosecution? Were they also involved in targeting Singh Nijjar as the US indictment implies? If so, then the Canadian response to the killing is surely vindicated, rogue or no rogue.
Who do these people think they are, the CIA and United States government?