Two RAW officers asked to leave stations in major Western cities: report

Two senior Research and Analysis Wing officers were asked to leave their stations in major Western cities earlier this summer, The Print reported while citing intelligence sources on Thursday.

RAW was also blocked from replacing its station head in Washington, DC, the Indian news outlet said.

The story was reported two days after the US Justice Department accused an Indian government employee of directing an unsuccessful plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist on US soil.

Last week, a senior Biden administration official said the US authorities had thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the US and issued a warning to India over concerns the government in New Delhi was involved.

“Expelling the officers was part of a series of moves intended to signal anger against what the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom saw as violations of the unwritten conventions which govern the operations of RAW in those countries,” said the report.

According to the intelligence sources, the officers were the head of the RAW station in San Francisco and the second-in-command of its operations in London. The officers were of senior and mid-senior levels in the Indian Police Service. The news outlet did not share their names as both remain in service with the Indian intelligence agency.

It added that the Narendra Modi-led government was denied permission to post an officer to replace RAW’s station chief in Washington, DC, who returned home earlier this year. The new officer was to have taken charge before the scheduled retirement of the organisation’s former chief Samant Goel on June 30.