NEW DELHI // India announced on Thursday that it was expelling a Pakistani visa official for suspected spying after he was briefly detained carrying sensitive defence documents.
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 co-conspirators 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,” said Mr Yadav, adding that the two Indians from the northern state of Rajasthan had been arrested.
Police extensively questioned the official, named as Mehmood Akhtar, before releasing him on diplomatic grounds.
India’s foreign secretary Subrahmanyam 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”.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry later announced it would send back an Indian diplomat from Islamabad in an apparent tit-for-tat move.
The expulsions came as an Indian soldier died from injuries he received during an exchange of fire with Pakistani soldiers across the border.
Tensions between Delhi and Islamabad have soared since 19 Indian soldiers were killed last month in a raid on an Indian army base near the de facto border dividing Kashmir. It was the worst such attack in more than a decade.
India blamed militants in Pakistan for the attack and said it had responded by carrying out strikes across the heavily-militarised boundary known as the Line of Control. Islamabad denies the strikes took place, however.
Pakistan’s high commission in Delhi rejected the “false and unsubstantiated charges” levelled against its official and condemned his “detention and manhandling”.
Pakistan’s high commissioner Abdul Basit had lodged a “strong protest” with the Indian foreign ministry over the affair, a Pakistani diplomatic source said.
Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said the official was “caught literally red-handed while accepting sensitive documents pertaining to vital national security”.
Mr Yadav said Mr Akhtar was carrying documents that included maps showing deployment of India’s Border Security Forces (BSF) and army soldiers.
The two Indian nationals have been charged under the official secrets act and been remanded into custody. One of the men told reporters outside court that he was only “teaching children”.
* Agence France-Presse