RAW Loses Key Staff in San Francisco, Washington and London

Earlier this summer, two senior Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) Indian intelligence officers in two major Western countries were asked to leave their stations. The US also blocked RAW from replacing its station head in Washington, DC. The expelled officers were head of RAW station in San Francisco and second-in-command of its operations in London. This is unprecedented and has never happened since RAW was founded in 1968. On 26 Nov, the Indian High Commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, said the US has shared ‘legally presentable’ inputs with India but Canada is yet to provide ‘relevant information’ on the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Verma was speaking on CTV’s Question Hour. Meanwhile, TIME magazine spoke to Gurpatwant Singh Pannu. Pannu stated, ‘The Indian government and the Modi regime want to kill me, they want to eliminate me for running the global Khalistan referendum voting campaign.’ To another question, he responds, ‘An act of terrorism is when you're bombing or killing innocents, or even when you're killing for a political goal. A political assassination is also an act of violence...I will not respond back with violence. I will not use a bullet. I will never incite the people of Panjab working with me to take violence as the path. Because that is exactly what I'm fighting. We are fighting India’s violence with votes.’ Pannu says his work is motivated by one goal. ‘To pursue the right of the Sikh community to self-determination.’ In the interview, Pannu comes across vastly toned down from his earlier aggressive stances and acerbic.