India’s foreign intelligence services are a feared enemy in their neighborhood: Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal have all accused it of political interference and involvement in outlaw groups that have carried out acts of violence.
Now, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegations last month that Indian government agents were involved in the June assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in a Vancouver suburb have propelled the secret research wing and Analysis (RAW) of Delhi in the spotlight of the whole world.
India angrily denied the allegations and demanded that Canada – which expelled the RAW station chief – provide evidence. Ottawa said it was sharing the evidence with its allies, but would not release it publicly.
Reuters spoke to four retired and two serving Indian security and intelligence officials familiar with RAW who said the agency was galvanized to take a more assertive international role after the 2008 Mumbai attacks , which left 166 dead. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
Four officials said RAW gradually expanded its reach in Western countries after 2008. A current official cited India’s failure to secure the extradition of a U.S. citizen convicted of involvement in the attack on Mumbai as a key motivation for RAW to increase its influence in the West.
While in its immediate vicinity RAW has advanced communications and technical intelligence capabilities, in the West the agency remains largely dependent on human intelligence for its operations, according to a current and former official.
RAW, like other branches of India’s national security apparatus, has been emboldened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has strengthened India’s defense capabilities since his 2014 election and built a strongman image , five of the officials said.
Modi’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
RAW chief Ravi Sinha, the only serving official publicly affiliated with the agency, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Sinha reports to Modi’s office through powerful national security adviser Ajit Doval, who also did not respond to a request for comment.
The six officials denied that RAW engaged in targeted killings, emphasizing that the agency had no mandate for such operations.
The fallout from the Vancouver incident has also raised fears that RAW will face increased global surveillance, Indian intelligence officials and analysts said.
“Current developments have undoubtedly increased global curiosity about RAW,” said Dheeraj Paramesha Chaya, an Indian intelligence expert at Britain’s University of Hull. He added that greater Western scrutiny of RAW’s activities could also provide insight into Delhi’s security concerns.
The West has expanded military and intelligence cooperation with Delhi as tensions with China have risen, with Washington agreeing in 2020 to share sensitive map and satellite data with India.
In the short term, Canada’s assertion could make it harder for Western countries to trust RAW, one of the officials said.
Ottawa and Delhi have been in a diplomatic standoff since Trudeau made his allegations publicly. India has suspended the issuance of new visas to Canadian citizens and demanded that Ottawa reduce its diplomatic presence.
Canada unsuccessfully pushed allies like the United States to issue a joint statement condemning India, the Washington Post reported.
EXPANSION OF PRESENCE AFTER MUMBAI
RAW has long been identified as a major rival by Pakistan’s security leadership. More recently, Islamabad – without providing evidence – blamed RAW for Friday’s suicide attack near a mosque, which killed more than 50 people. A spokesperson for India’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the accusation.
The Indian government has publicly blamed Islamabad for the 2008 Mumbai attacks – widely seen by Delhi policymakers as RAW’s most recent major failure – which Delhi says were carried out by Pakistan-based militants.
Islamabad has denied the involvement of its agents.
The agency has strengthened its intelligence-gathering operations in the West, including North America, thanks to the role of US citizen David Headley, who is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence in Chicago for charges including sites of the Mumbai attacks, one of the officials said. said.
U.S. law enforcement officials were warned before the attack that Headley had ties to terrorism, according to U.S. media reports. Senior Indian politicians have publicly suggested he was a US “double agent”, and Delhi’s failure to secure his extradition has frustrated RAW, the official said.
The United States, which gave Headley access to India, denied he was a double agent. The US embassy in Delhi did not respond to a request for comment.
RAW has had a small Western presence since its founding in the 1960s, when it inherited the London station of the Intelligence Bureau, a colonial-era agency that now focuses on domestic security, according to Chaya, the professor from Hull.
The large Indian diaspora in countries like the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia is an asset, two officials said.
But the risk of Indian agents being placed under surveillance in their host countries means they are used for political influence campaigns rather than security operations, they said.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported in 2020, citing government and intelligence sources, that the country’s security services were monitoring the possibility of India and China using their diaspora to influence candidates in that year’s federal election .
“Our footprint is growing in parts of the world that were not significant before,” a recently retired senior RAW official said, without providing details.
RAW has “long been associated with direct actions… including targeted assassinations and disappearances” in its immediate vicinity, said Adrian Levy, co-author of a book on South Asian spy agencies, adding that such actions were organized through proxies, giving India’s denial.
Delhi has generally not seen the need for covert operations outside South Asia because it maintains friendly relations with many countries that allow it to achieve goals such as extradition and access to people of interest, an official said.
The agency has been “very cautious” about its operations in the West, Levy said. While RAW organized the movement of money, weapons, and men to other locations from Europe, “direct action was reserved for South Asia and Southeast Asia “, did he declare.
POLITICAL SUPPORT
RAW operates from a drab, signless office complex in central Delhi. Reuters was unable to determine details of the agency’s operations, such as its budget and size.
It separated from the Intelligence Bureau in 1968 and was initially tasked with keeping a watchful eye on China after Delhi’s humiliation in the brief war of 1962. RAW had close ties to Israel’s Mossad and the CIA since its inception, according to a 2008 report by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank that tracks Indian foreign and security policy.
A serving official and a retired official told Reuters that RAW’s political masters in the Modi government had demanded that RAW expand its “presence, importance and capabilities.”
“What they did was give confidence to the organization,” one of the officials said.
Two serving and one retired RAW agents told Reuters that some previous governments had failed to offer enough resources and political support.
Under Modi, India’s national security community “has become much more proactive, in terms of diplomacy (and) deal-making, but also direct action, analog and digital,” said Levy, editor-in-chief of the information.
But as Indian intelligence services have grown in capabilities and reach, the legal framework within which they operate has not kept pace with how modern democracies handle espionage operations, he said. declared.
RAW was created by government order without formal parliamentary or constitutional support and is exempt from legislative oversight, according to PRS, a research group that studies India’s federal and state legislatures.
“This means there is less oversight and fewer legal obstacles … since the real command and control is centralized” with the prime minister, Levy said.
