COLOMBO // Sri Lanka expelled a Colombo-based Indian spy agent accused of helping the opposition defeat President Mahinda Rajapaksa in this month’s election, political sources said.
An Indian foreign ministry spokesman denied the expulsion claims and said that transfers were routine decisions.
Mr Rajapaksa, voted out of office in the January 8 presidential election, declined to confirm the involvement of India in the campaign against him, while the new government in Colombo admitted it was aware of the reports but could not confirm them.
However, sources in Colombo and New Delhi said India was asked to recall the agent in December for helping gather support for joint opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena after persuading him to leave Mr Rajapaksa’s cabinet.
A sketchy report in Sri Lanka's Sunday Times newspaper on December 28 said that "links with the common opposition" had cost India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) station chief his job in Colombo.
India has often been involved in the internal politics of the small island nation off its southern coast. In 1987, it sent troops there in a botched effort to broker peace between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.
Mr Rajapaksa’s unexpected defeat after two terms in office coincided with growing concern in India that it was losing influence in Sri Lanka because of the former president’s tilt toward regional rival China.
The concern turned to alarm late last year when Mr Rajapaksa allowed two Chinese submarines to dock in Sri Lanka without warning New Delhi as he should have under a standing agreement.
Mr Sirisena, the new president, will visit New Delhi on his first foreign trip next month. He has said India is the “first, main concern” of his foreign policy.
An Indian official said the RAW agent was recalled after complaints that he had worked with Sri Lanka’s opposition parties to agree on a joint contender for the election. The agent was accused of playing a role in convincing the main leader of the opposition and former prime minister Ranil Wickremasinghe not to contest against Mr Rajapaksa in the election, said the officer and a Sri Lankan lawmaker.
Mr Wickremasinghe, now prime minister again in Mr Sirisena’s government, met “two or three times” with the man identified as the agent in the months before the vote, the prime minister’s spokesman said.
He denied that the Indians had advised him.
A close associate of the Rajapaksa family said “there were clear signs of a deep campaign by foreign elements”.
New Delhi had been watching Beijing’s growing influence and heavy investments in Sri Lanka under Mr Rajapaksa, who visited China seven times since becoming president in 2005, said another Indian security official.
But India was angry last year when the Chinese submarines docked in Sri Lanka on two separate occasions, a step New Delhi saw as part of Beijing’s “string of pearls” strategy to secure a foothold in South Asia.
“The turning point in the relationship was the submarines. There was real anger,” the Indian security official said.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankan authorities began investigations into a claim that the toppled president’s younger brother ran a “death squad” and ordered a high-profile newspaper editor’s assassination.
Former defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse ordered the hit on Lasantha Wickrematunga in January 2009, said ex-public relations minister Mervyn Silva in a formal complaint lodged with police on Saturday.
Wickrematunga was fatally shot in 2009, just days before he was due to testify in a defamation case that Mr Rajapakse had filed against his paper, which had been highly critical of the then-ruling family.
“We have received a complaint that Gotabhaya Rajapakse was responsible for abductions, assaults and murder,” police spokesman Ajith Rohana said on Sunday. “Three murders have been mentioned and one is that of Lasantha Wickrematunga. He [Rajapakse] is accused of running a death squad.”
Since Mahinda Rajapakse’s defeat in the presidential elections, complaints have flooded a Sri Lankan anti-graft commission alleging huge corruption by members of his administration.
* Reuters and Agence France-Presse
