India’s espionage spree
The writer was a Young Development Fellow at the Ministry of Planning and presently serving as an Assistant Research Associate at IPRI
It is not only Canada that has raised allegations against the Indian government’s involvement in the covert intelligence activities leading to the death of the Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar. In August 2022, eight Indian naval officers were arrested in Qatar and charged with espionage for Israel and India. These officers worked for a Qatari firm and trained Qatar’s Navy in equipment maintenance and logistics. It was found only later that these officers were sharing classified and sensitive information regarding Qatar’s U212 submarines — capable of deceiving radar detection —with Israel, Iran and India. Commander (retd) Purnendu Tiwari was the prime spy who transferred data regarding leading Muslim countries to Israel and India. He was also awarded the Highest Honoured Overseas Indian Award (Pravasi Samman Award) by the Indian President in 2019.
For obvious reasons, India denied these allegations but the news of the arrest was released by the wife of one of these spies on social media. The issue gained greater traction and under the mounting pressure India had to engage in negotiations with Qatar to release its spies. Since then, the relations between Qatar and India have been sour like they have gotten tangy with Canada these days.
Aside from this, an Indian couple was arrested in Germany over the allegations that they have been spying on Kashmiri and Sikh groups for the Indian intelligence agencies. The German court confirmed that the couple was involved in espionage for India. In January 2015, Sri Lanka accused India’s Intelligence Agency of meddling in its internal politics. There have been multiple instances of capture of Indian spies in Pakistan, like Ravindra Kaushik, Kashmir Singh, Akhil Dev and Kulbhushan Jadhav.
While India may offer a growing market to other countries it does not seem to shy away from risking its relations with other countries with its intelligence activities that undermine the sovereignty of other states. As the forms and types of war changed over the years, it became more and more difficult to engage in direct, conventional warfare. The cost of total warfare outweighs any and all benefit/s that a war would bring. This has made countries resort to indirect and unconventional forms of warfare like trade wars, cyber wars, tech wars and so on. Using intelligence and proxy wars to procure political, economic and military benefits is a cheaper alternative for countries like India. Espionage is covertly used to execute state policy and ensure informed policymaking.
There have been debates about the legality and acceptability of espionage at the international level. Some groups of legal scholars favour it while others believe it is acceptable under certain conditions.
The ideas of state sovereignty and territorial integrity have evolved rapidly over the past few decades. The purpose, method and practice of espionage have also undergone transition. Human intelligence was not illegal at one point but today cyber espionage has become a form of intelligence gathering that goes unaddressed by international law. While international law prohibits the use of force, and interference in domestic affairs of a state guarantees the right to self-determination and privacy, it does not have an explicit stance on espionage.
In the Nicaragua vs the US case, the ICJ declared that the US was guilty of violating international law because it supported the Contras to rebel against the Sandinistas and used direct and indirect force to undermine the Nicaraguan government. The UNGA Resolution 3314 holds that besides direct coercive action, secret funding, supply and training of aggressors is also a form of aggression against a sovereign state. The UN Charter pledges equal sovereignty for all states and lays emphasis on the principle of non-intervention and the right to self-determination.
This makes it clear that the aforementioned acts of espionage by India were not benign efforts to gather intelligence but to secretly execute its policy on a foreign territory. Covert activities and operations that aim to control and influence political developments in another state, by all means, violate the principle of sovereignty and non-intervention.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 21st, 2023.
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