ISLAMABAD: Three out of eight Indian High Commission officials suspected of involvement in terrorist and subversive activities in Pakistan left for India on Tuesday.
Anurag Singh, Vijay Kumar Verma and Madhavan Nanda Kumar, members of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), left for India on flight EK613 via Dubai.
Rajesh Kumar, Amerdeep Singh Bhatti and Dharmendra Sodhi, who are also alleged members of RAW, are still in Pakistan, along with Balbir Singh and Jayabalan Senthil, who are said to be Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB) operatives.
The Foreign Office (FO) during a press briefing last week revealed the details of the eight Indian ‘diplomats’ in Pakistan, saying that a number of Indian diplomats and staff belonging to the Indian intelligence agencies RAW and IB had been found involved in aiding terrorist and subversive activities in Pakistan under the garb of diplomatic assignments.
The FO said the suspected RAW and IB operatives handled Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) factions, fuelled sectarianism in Pakistan and created unrest in Balochistan, Sindh, and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB).
“They [India] are desperate to hide their crimes against humanity from the international community’s scrutiny,” the FO had said.
Giving details of the alleged activities of suspected RAW and IB operatives, the FO had said they were involved in espionage, subversion, supporting of terrorist activities and fuelling instability in Balochistan and Sindh, especially Karachi.
Authorities said that the accused had also been tasked with sabotaging the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, creating unrest in Gilgit-Baltistan and expanding network of operatives and agents under the guise of commercial activities.
They said the operatives also worked for damaging the Pak-Afghan relations through a variety of activities, and used to infiltrate Indian agents into the social, media and political circles for propaganda purposes and activities detrimental to Pakistan’s interests.
The FO said that the agents used to fabricate evidence to portray Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, and at the same time handled factions of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
The Indian High Commission officials were also accused of fuelling sectarianism and maligning Pakistan with propaganda on human rights issues, besides their activities in Azad Jammu and Kashmir that were detrimental to the Kashmir cause.
The FO said that those Indian agents had also been misleading the international community about the indigenous movement for self-determination in Indian-held Kashmir.
The leak that took the confrontation between the two countries to a new peak came after Pakistan was forced to pull out six of its officers and staff posted at the high commission in New Delhi because of Indian allegations that four diplomats were working for Pakistani intelligence agencies. The withdrawn officers and staffers reached Lahore on Wednesday.
The leak about Indian undercover agents is one of the most significant exposé relating to undercover agents since the US Central Intelligence Agency was forced to pull out its station chief Jonathan Banks in December 2010 after his identity was revealed in a law suit by victims of drone attacks.
In 2010, an Indian undercover set-up was also partially revealed after India arrested one of its own high commission officers on the charges of working for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Never before has the cover of such a large number of agents been blown in one instance.
