I worked for RAW, was told to kill a Sikh leader: Asylum plea in US court

If officials being compromised by other agencies, defections and some candid disclosures by former employees were not enough to rattle the country’s premier external intelligence agency...

If officials being compromised by other agencies, defections and some candid disclosures by former employees were not enough to rattle the country’s premier external intelligence agency, it now has on its table a mysterious case of a man seeking asylum in the US that could bring the back the ghost of Rabinder Singh.

Six months after Rabinder hoodwinked his organization, the Research and Analysis Wing, and is suspected to have fled to the United States, a case came up before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California. This was filed by one Surenderjeet Singh who claimed to have worked with RAW as a “field agent” during the Sikh militancy years and fell out when the agency “ordered to aid in the assassination of a very religious person”.

While there is no confirmation whether Surenderjeet has any link with Rabinder, the fact is that Rabinder, too, is a Sikh and his first assignment in the early 1980s was that of a field officer in Amritsar covering Sikh militancy. Surenderjeet has submitted, according to the court opinion, “postal receipts” and “showed mailings to the RAW” as evidence of his plea.

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As it turns out, the plea was rejected by the first two levels, the Immigration Judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals on the ground that there was no “corroborative evidence” of the existence of a CIA-like agency know as RAW.

On December 23, 2004, the Ninth Circuit Court upheld Surenderjeet’s plea stating that the “RAW does exist. It is under the office of the Prime Minister of India. It does engage in counter-terrorism”. So, the case was remanded back for reconsideration by Immigration authorities.

Three years later, the case continues in the Board of Immigration Appeals while Surenderjeet Singh has been given relief to stay in the US until the authorities take a decision. Confirming this, Charles Miller, a Spokesperson of the US Department of Justice, told The Sunday Express that details of immigration proceedings are “not public” and that the legal process is underway.

Ashwani Bakhari, Surenderjeet’s lawyer in the Ninth Circuit, says he no longer represents him. “All I can say is that he was 50 years old because the rest is confidential,” he told The Sunday Express. RAW Chief Ashok Chaturvedi said: “I am not aware of the details but no one by this name worked for us.”

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In the days of Sikh militancy, several Sikhs did apply for asylum but this trend stopped some years ago.