India expels Pakistan visa official for ‘ espionage’ as tensions run high
India announced Thursday it was expelling a Pakistani visa official for suspected spying after he was briefly detained carrying sensitive defense documents, with tensions between the nuclear- armed neighbors already running high.
New Delhi police said the official had been recruiting Indian nationals for two and a half years to spy for Pakistan’s powerful Inter- Services Intelligence ( ISI) in return for cash.
“Delhi police crime branch has busted an espionage racket run by a kingpin working in the Pakistan high commission,” said Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner of police on crime.
The official was detained on Wednesday at the Delhi zoo where he had arranged to meet two alleged Indian coconspirators to exchange information including troop deployment along the border.
“They used to meet once in a month at a pre- decided place to exchange documents and money,” Yadav told reporters in New Delhi, adding that the two Indians from the northern state of Rajasthan were arrested.
Police extensively questioned the official, named as Mehmood Akhtar, before releasing him on diplomatic grounds.
India’s foreign secretary Subrahman- yam Jaishankar summoned Pakistan’s high commissioner to inform him of the decision to expel the official within 48 hours after declaring him “persona non grata”.
Tensions between India and Pakistan have soared since a raid last month on an Indian army base near the de- facto border dividing Kashmir killed 19 soldiers, the worst such attack in more than a decade.
India blamed militants in Pakistan and said it had responded by carrying out strikes across the heavily- militarized border, although Islamabad denies these took place.
Indian and Pakistani troops regularly exchange fire across the border known as the Line of Control in Kashmir, but sending ground troops over the line is rare.
Pakistan’s High Commission in Delhi rejected the “false and unsubstantiated charges” leveled against its official and condemned his “detention and manhandling”.