The Quiet Assassin? India’s Research & Analysis Wing and Organised Crime
The Asian Crime Century briefing 71
There is growing evidence that the Research & Intelligence Wing (RAW), the foreign intelligence agency of India, is conducting a program of assassinations of dissidents around the world with the possible collaboration of organised crime groups.
Last week three Indian nationals were charged with the murder of a Sikh dissident in British Colombia. In the US, there are reports that an officer of the RAW planned an assassination of a Sikh activist (a US national) in the country. There have also been reports of the assassination of up to 20 dissidents in Pakistan since 2020. If the speculation is correct, the Indian intelligence services may have quietly shifted their emphasis in recent years from surveillance and harassment to the assassination of Indian separatist terrorists and separatists based outside of the country.
A robust targeting approach to terrorists involving assassinations is a dangerous road for any intelligence service as such a program can expand to encompass political opponents of the government who are not engaged in violence. The additional concern now being raised is whether the RAW, or any other Indian intelligence group, may be using criminals to conduct operations in other countries which would a dangerous liaison and potentially expand the influence of the organised crime groups involved.
The Canada Killings
On 3 May, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) charged three Indian men in connection with the murder of Sikh separatist activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot in British Colombia in September 2023. The alleged assassins, Karanpreet Singh, Kamalpreet Singh and Karan Brar, are Indian nationals who have been living in Canada between three and five years on temporary or student visas.
They allegedly worked as a team on the assassination of Nijjar (reported in the Asian Crime Century briefing 38), and are each facing one count of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to murder. News media in Canada have quoted confidential sources as stating that the suspects may have been working at the direction of Indian government intelligence when they shot Nijjar. According to court records, Karan Brar has also been charged with two other murders that occurred in 2023.
The three arrested men are not likely to be directly employed as intelligence officers of the RAW or any other agency, but seem likely to be contractors engaged to ensure deniability for the crime. It has been reported in Canada that the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar was linked to the ‘Bishnoi crime group’. The group has been led by Lawrence Bishnoi, currently imprisoned in India, whose gang has been linked to over 700 shootings across India. Bishnoi and his associate Goldy Brar also allegedly have links to pro-Khalistan (Sikh separatist) groups. According to Indian news reports, after 2017 the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in association with Babbar Khalsa International (a Sikh separatist group) commenced ‘targeted killings’, and the Kashmir-Khalistan Desk at ISI began employing Bishnoi’s men to conduct the assassinations.
It is notable that government officials in India tend to blame Pakistan for almost every violent event against India, and it would not be unusual for them to do the same to deflect suspicion regarding the organisation of the killings in Canada away from the RAW and onto the ISI. From 2022, the National Investigation Agency in India has conducted a major crackdown on the Bishnoi crime group to counter their use as a proxy of the ISI and so it would be unusual if Bishnoi group members were being used by the RAW (and most likely be contrary to the interests of Indian law enforcement agencies).
The Pakistan Killings
Reports in news media have suggested that the Indian government has conducted assassinations in Pakistan as part of a wider strategy to eliminate “terrorists” based outside the country. Care should be taken with such a claim as some of the sources are reported as “intelligence officials” and “Pakistani investigators”, indicating a risk that these could be narratives propagated by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the military intelligence agency of Pakistan.
In October 2023, Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist Shahid Latif was shot and killed in a mosque in Pakistan. Latif was allegedly the mastermind of the attack in 2016 on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, which killed 8 victims after a prolonged gun battle. The Pakistani Inspector General of Police in Punjab was reported to have said that a "rogue nation and its hostile intelligence agency are involved in executing the terror attack in Pakistan… This attack was planned outside Pakistan. A hostile intelligence agency sent a person to Pakistan.” The unstated suggestion is that the Indian government was involved.
Sources quoted in recent news reports have claimed that the more proactive targeting of overseas terrorist cells came after a suicide car bomb attack in February 2019 near Srinagar in Kashmir that killed over 30 Indian para-military officers who were part of a large convoy of over 2,500 soldiers. Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility for the bombing, which they claimed was carried out by a fighter recruited from Kashmir. This explanation does not seem entirely credible.
Far more serious were previous terrorist attacks on India which would have been more likely to trigger a more proactive response against overseas based groups. In November 2008, terrorists from Lashkar e-Taiba conducted 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks in Mumbai that killed 175 people with 300 injured. The terrorists attacked the iconic Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, as well as the Oberoi Trident Hotel and other public sites where civilians were the targets. In March 1993, members of the ‘D-Company’, an organised crime group led by Dawood Ibrahim with links to Muslim terrorist groups, carried out 12 bomb attacks in Mumbai that caused the death of 257 people and another 1,400 injured.
The targets of both the 2008 and 1993 Mumbai terrorist attacks were civilian sites, not military, and caused a far deeper public impact than the 2019 suicide bomb attack on a military convoy in Kashmir, where a low intensity conflict has continued since 1947 and dissidents, militants and terrorist fighters have sheltered in Pakistan to evade Indian government forces. It is difficult to see how the attack on a military convoy would have triggered such a wide change of strategy by the Indian government to include an overseas assassination program.
However, the nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have lost patience with a long term measured approach and quietly changed direction. If this is the case, then the RAW may have been tasked with coordinating proactive overseas operations including assassinations.
The US Assassination Plan
Recent reports have referred to US and Indian former intelligence sources as stating that a serving RAW officer, Vikram Yadav, was planning in mid 2023 to have a Sikh activist in the US assassinated. The Indian intelligence officer was referred to in an indictment issued in the US in 2023, but only named in the news media in April 2024.
In November 2023, the US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment that detailed the plans by an employee of the Indian government and others to assassinate a US citizen of Indian origin living in New York. The target is a lawyer who has campaigned for some or all of the Punjab to secede from India to form a new state of ‘Khalistan’. The Indian official named in the indictment was described as a “Senior Field Officer” with responsibilities in “security management” and “intelligence” who had previously served in India’s Central Reserve Police Force where he received officer, battle craft, and weapons training. This officer allegedly directed the assassination plot from India.
According to the US indictment, the Indian intelligence officer recruited Nikhil Gupta to organise the assassination in the US. Gupta is alleged to have a background of involvement in narcotics and weapons trafficking, which the Indian intelligence officer was aware of. Gupta commissioned a ‘hit man’ to conduct the assassination, unaware that he was in fact an undercover US law enforcement officer.
The indictment goes on to state that Gupta and the Indian intelligence officer were in communication regarding the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, with Gupta sending a video of Nijjar dead in his car and also telling the undercover ‘assassin’ that they had many similar targets.
There are recent news media reports from unnamed intelligence sources that the targeting of the Sikh activist in the US was approved by the chief of RAW, which had plans to target Sikh activists overseas. The assassination plan in the US coincides with the killing of Nijjar in Canada and the increase in killings of Sikh and Kashmiri activists in Pakistan. The assessment of intelligence sources quoted in the Washington Post is that this is part of increased surveillance and harassment of Sikhs and other groups overseas perceived as disloyal to the Modi government.
The Research & Analysis Wing – Quiet Assassin?
The RAW was formed in in 1968 as a result of Indian failures to detect the build-up to the border war with China in 1962. The focus of the RAW has largely been on Pakistan and India, but the agency has a typically wide external intelligence responsibility. The RAW was involved in direct support for the terrorist ‘Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’ (LTTE) in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the RAW reportedly established covert action groups targeting both Pakistan as well as ‘Khalistani’ (Sikh) separatist groups which involved conducting a bombing campaign in Pakistan. The RAW has a history of conducting offensive intelligence operations in difficult environments and should be considered highly capable.
RAW senior officers tend to be erudite people who have deep insight into issues in their region, and indeed in the wider world. RAW officers are intelligence professionals, but operate in a tough neighbourhood. India has faced constant terrorist threats coordinated from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, as well as complicated issues from the Arabian peninsula in the west as well as south east Asia to the east. It is to be expected that the RAW not only has the intelligence analysis capability to understand these threats, but also the operational capability to counter them.
Since its inception the RAW has operated under the Cabinet Secretariat reporting directly to the Prime Minister. The RAW is by nature opaque, and given the authoritarian tendencies of the Modi government it is possible based on recent cases of assassination of Indian dissidents whether RAW has become more operational in countering overseas opponents of the current government. If the RAW, or any cell within the organisation or any other part of the Indian intelligence apparatus, is using organised crime groups to conduct operations then this is a dangerous path. It is not likely that organised crime groups can be controlled to stay within operational parameters set by intelligence officers. Once they have started to become involved in Indian diaspora politics they are not likely to stop.
The pursuit of overseas dissidents by the Indian authorities is sadly similar to the Chinese communist as well as Iranian government pursuit of critics and opponents around the world. This is not a category that India should be a part of, and RAW should now exercise control over their officers to prevent further damage to the reputation of the agency as well as their country.