Four retired and two serving Indian security and intelligence officials familiar with the operations of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the country’s foreign intelligence agency, have denied that it engages in “targeted killings,” Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The revelation comes against the backdrop of an ongoing diplomatic row between India and Canada over the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia.
All six officials, who were not named in the report, denied that RAW engages in extrajudicial killings, saying “the agency has no mandate for such operations,” dismissing the allegations by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who claimed that his government has “credible information” linking “agents of the Indian government” to the June killing of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Four of the officials who were interviewed told Reuters that the spy agency increased its footprint in Western countries after 2008, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on India’s business capital, Mumbai, in which 166 people lost their lives.
Another official currently serving told the news agency that India’s failure to secure the extradition of US citizen David Healy, who was convicted for his involvement in the Mumbai attack, was a “key motivation” for RAW “to increase its sway in the West.” Healy is serving a 35-year prison sentence in Chicago on charges that included scouting locations for the attack.
One serving and one retired official said that while the RAW has advanced “signal and technical intelligence capabilities” in its immediate neighborhood, in the West, it remains “largely dependent on human intelligence for its operations.”
Five of the officials said that the RAW has been “emboldened” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who enhanced India’s defense capabilities after winning his first election in 2014.
“What they have done is to give confidence to the organization,” one of the officials was quoted as saying. Another person said that in the short term, Canada’s allegations against India might make it “harder for Western countries to trust RAW.”
Canada has not publicly presented any evidence to support Trudeau’s claims, which New Delhi denied and called “absurd.”
Ottawa’s partners in the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing alliance, which includes the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, have expressed their concern over the incident. Several White House officials have urged India to cooperate with the Canadian investigation.
Canadian state media outlet CBC claimed that the Canadian government has amassed “both human and signals intelligence in a months-long investigation” of the Sikh activist’s death. Intelligence gained by the Five Eyes network also led to Canada’s public accusation that the Indian government may have played a role in the assassination.
“I’m confirming that there was shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners that helped lead Canada to make the statements that the prime minister made,” US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen was quoted as saying by CNN.
Nijjar was one of the prominent leaders of the movement for the creation of a Sikh homeland – Khalistan – which would absorb parts of India’s Punjab state. He was designated as a “terrorist” by New Delhi in 2020, but continued living freely in Canada and was working as a plumber at the time of his death.
Following Trudeau’s accusations, Ottawa expelled senior diplomat Pavan Kumar Rai, who was the head of the RAW in Canada. In a reciprocal move, New Delhi expelled Canada’s intelligence service chief in India.
As relations between India and Canada continued to sour, both countries updated their travel guidelines to the other, urging travelers to “exercise caution.” New Delhi also canceled visa services for Canadian citizens and has appealed to Ottawa to reduce the size of its diplomatic mission in India.
On Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that India had called for the repatriation of 41 diplomats by October 10. Hours after the report came out, Trudeau said that Canada is not looking to “escalate the situation” with India. “Will continue to engage responsibly and constructively with New Delhi. We want to be on the ground in India to help Canadian families there,” Reuters quoted Trudeau as saying.