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SPOOKY EXPOSE: India’s
RAW tells its officers
to kill Sikh leaders
Officer tells US Court which confirms RAW indulges in counter
terrorism
WSN
Bureau
 NEW
DELHI/CALIFORNIA: If ever there was a spooky truth, often mouthed by
the Sikh nation, and consistently denied by India, it was that the
Indian establishment in its efforts to keep its vice like grip on
minorities and aspirational movements within the country, even
stoops so low as to order the killings of political opponents or get
murdered anyone in order to cause confusion in the ranks of those
opposing the establishment.
Now, the truth is out there, and no less than a court of the United
States has put its stamp on it. The WSN has access to massive
details of the case, including the judgement given by the United
States court. In India, sections of the media have done some “safe”
reporting, but nevertheless have helped expose the true face of
RAW.
Touching many a RAW nerve in Indian establishment’s dirty underbelly
of Intelligence agencies’ working, a very senior officer of India’s
top external sleuthing agency RAW is has told American legal system
that he was told to kill a Sikh leader but he refused to. Most
likely, this officer named Surenderjeet Singh could be none other
than Rabinder Singh who is suspected to have fled to the United
States, leaving many red faces in the RAW splashed with egg.
Now, the stink has returned to haunt the RAW again. And this at a
time when the agency is getting the stick from all and sundry for
harassing a couple of former employee officers who had so far “good
credentials” till they decided to expose some of the dirty dealings
inside the spooky agency.
For
years, official India even denied the very existence of RAW.
 A
section of the media in India has brought out sketchy details of the
case. The Indian Express, in a scoop of sorts, reported that six
months after Rabinder Singh case came to light, one Surenderjeet
Singh told a court in the United States that he was working for RAW
and was one of the scores of “field agents” during the Sikh
militancy and fell out with the agency when RAW told him to take
part in the assassination of a senior Sikh leader. The WSN of course
has many other details.
It
is not known whether told the Americans the name of the senior Sikh
leader. But he did say that it was a person of a very religious
nature. He first applied for asylum on this basis but his plea was
rejected by the Immigration Judge and then also by the Board of
Immigration Appeals. Then his case came up before the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals in California. He explicitly stated that he was
“ordered to aid in the assassination of a very religious person”.
Incidentally, the underground Sikh officer of the RAW whom the
agency is looking for all over, was also posted in Amritsar and was
a field officer involved with sleuthing about Sikh militancy in
early 1980s.
Initially, it seems, it was even difficult to establish that India
indeed has an agency named RAW. Now, the paper says, “Surenderjeet
has submitted, according to the court opinion, ‘postal receipts’ and
‘showed mailings to the RAW’ as evidence of his plea.”
The
Ninth Circuit Court, on December 23, 2004, upheld his plea and said
clearly that the ‘‘RAW does exist. It is under the office of the
Prime Minister of India. It does engage in counter-terrorism’’.
Three years later, the case continues in the Board of Immigration
Appeals while Surenderjeet Singh has been given relief to stay in
the US until the authorities take a decision. Confirming this,
Charles Miller, a Spokesperson of the US Department of Justice was
quoted by the newspaper as saying that details of immigration
proceedings are ‘‘not public’’ and that the legal process is under
way.
The
fact that such a plea is even being considered by a United States
court has left the security agencies bewildered. RAW officials are
denying that they ever carried out political assassinations, but the
fact remains that a court of the United States has now certified
that Indian intelligence people kill other people under the garb of
what they call “counter terrorism.” For years now, talk has been
around that the 35 Sikhs killed in Chattisingpura in Kashmir on the
eve of the visit of then US President Bill Clinton to India in March
2000 was the work of Indian intelligence agency.
 Earlier, nearly two-and-a-half years after Rabinder Singh, then
RAW's Joint Secretary in-charge of South East Asia, fled to the US,
RAW had formally lodged a criminal complaint in a Delhi court,
accusing him of compromising national security by spying for a
Western intelligence agency. In its complaint, running into some 30
pages and filed by RAW Additional Commissioner A K Sinha in the
court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Seema Maini in November 2006,
the agency claimed to have located Singh in New Jersey. It wanted
his extradition. India's Home Ministry has already ordered attaching
of Singh’s property.
An
Amritsar resident from an affluent landed family of Jats, Rabinder
Singh had served in the Indian Army as a Major before volunteering
to join RAW. He remained posted in Amritsar during Operation
Bluestar and RAW termed his tenure as a service performed “with
distinction” (meaning thereby that he did help in many anti-Sikh
operations). Rabinder Singh seem have remained in touch with one of
his relatives, a U.S. citizen who has worked for over two decades
with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),
a donor organisation. This relative, claims RAW, visited India
regularly on official work, sometimes staying at his residence. This
relationship, RAW investigators claim, enabled Rabinder Singh to
pass on some documents with only a minimal risk of exposure.
At
some point, however, RAW began to suspect that Rabinder Singh was
working for his source, and not the other way around. Newspaper
reports have suggested that his operations were detected because of
an inadvertent reference to him made in casual conversation by the
CIA's station chief for India, who sources identified as a U.S.
Embassy official posted to New Delhi in 2002. However, there have
been other reports which said that Singh's energetic use of his
office photocopier had attracted the attention of his subordinate
staff, who reported it to RAW's counter-intelligence section.
But that may be the story of RAW and Rabinder Singh’s relationship.
More important is the story about the skeletons in RAW’s cupboards
which are tumbling out with great speed and noise. The fact that one
of the officers has gone on record stating that RAW was ordering
killings of Sikh leaders, and the fact that even a court of the
United States with no axe to grind, has stated on record that RAW
does indulge in counter-terrorism, should be enough to prove what
the Sikh nation has always claimed: that RAW means WAR, war against
its own people, against the minorities, against the regional
aspirational movements. Who, then, is a terrorist? The men and women
in naxalite areas who only wanted land reforms? The young girls in
India’s north east who want that the soldiers be asked not to rape
them? Those fighting against Special Armed Forces Act which enables
use of unaccountable force? Or the Sikh nation which wants that its
young be not killed in fake encounters and RAW does not order its
officers to kill senior Sikh religious leaders?
17
October, 2007
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