Police say Mehmood Akhtar
and two men were carrying forged documents and maps showing Indian troop
deployments
By Michael Safi
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Subhash Jangir, left, and Maulana Ramzan have been taken into
custody.
Photograph: EPA
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India
says it will expel a Pakistani diplomat it accuses of being the “kingpin” of a
spy ring, after his arrest on Wednesday outside the gates of the Delhi zoo,
where police allege he was planning to meet Indian contacts he had recruited.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours
are at their highest for more than a decade after 19 Indian soldiers were
killed in Kashmir last month in an attack by militants that Delhi accuses
Islamabad of sponsoring.
Police said the official, named as Mehmood
Akhtar, and two Indians also arrested – Subhash Jangir and Maulana Ramzan –
were carrying forged documents, lists of army officers stationed at the
India-Pakistan border and maps showing Indian troop deployments.
Akhtar, who reportedly worked in the visa
section of Pakistan’s high commission, has been released by police in line with
agreements on diplomatic immunity, but has been declared persona non grata.
Ravindra Yadav, a police official, claimed
the ring had been operating for two and a half years and that Akhtar was the
kingpin.
The two Indian nationals in custody were from
the northern state of Rajasthan, he said, and had been planning to meet Akhtar
at the zoo the previous day to exchange documents and information for cash.
“They used to meet once in a month at a
pre-decided place to exchange documents and money,” Yadav said.
There was a “high probability” that the
leaked information was being used against Indian interests, a police statement
said, adding that authorities had been trying to bust the alleged spy ring for
six months.
Pakistan’s high commission in Delhi rejected
the allegations and denied having ever engaged in activities “incompatible with
its diplomatic status”.
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Pakistan’s top official in Delhi, Abdul
Basit, was summoned to India’s foreign ministry to be officially informed of
the decision, an Indian government spokesman said.
Late on Thursday night, Pakistan’s foreign
ministry said it had declared an Indian diplomat, Surjeet Singh, persona non
grata and given him 48 hours to leave the country.
A statement said Singh was accused of
activities “that were in violation of the Vienna convention and the established
diplomatic norms” but did not elaborate.
An aide to India’s prime minister in New
Delhi said the government was looking into the matter. India’s external
affair’s ministry spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
The diplomatic expulsions come amid
heightened tensions over Kashmir.
In late September, India made an
unprecedented announcement that it had sent special forces teams into
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to kill militants it claimed were preparing to
cross into the Indian-controlled side.
The two countries have been at loggerheads
over Kashmir since 1947, when India was partitioned, and fought their first war
over the Himalayan province they both claim in full but rule in part.
Pakistan has denied the special forces
operation took place and claims India is trying to distract from its crackdown
on unrest on its side of Kashmir, where more than 90 civilians have been
arrested and thousands detained in a summer of protests.
The unrest stems from the killing in July of
a separatist militant, Burhan Wani, whose death has become a rallying point for
Kashmiris who want greater autonomy from Delhi or complete independence.
India has been pushing to internationally
isolate Pakistan since the attack on its soldiers and, at a recent summit, the
prime minister, Narendra Modi, described the Islamabad government as “the
mothership of terrorism”.
Reuters contributed to this report
