Comments on: Policing even farther South of the Border?

By: dj

dj — Fri, 27 May 2005 21:21:17 +0000

runnerwallah : For the benefit of the others here, I present Mr. Rabinder Singh.

Rabinder Singh was a Joint Secretary in the RAW. Apparently he has fled to the US via Nepal during the elections last May.

He was under watch(after some shady behavior, missing files) and given his senior position in RAW, they chose to wait & watch(A small time field agent would've had a small accident at the earliest).

He has since been fired and the RAW has unearthed multiple offshore bank accounts.

However, it is also possible that the whole thing is some kind of RAW blackop...WE'll never know..

By: Aten

Aten — Fri, 27 May 2005 19:44:04 +0000

My cynical angle is: the customs guys might have problems taking bribes like earlier. Plus they would be embarassed by showcasing the sheer incompetency of our security and intelligence apparatus.

India is already overrun by US intellegence agents who can buy whatever info they want with a few dollars, there is no need to actually do any snooping.

No wonder India is considered a light weight and gets no respect in the international community.

By: cssw

cssw — Fri, 27 May 2005 18:58:04 +0000

...one of their arguments would surely be that these might be "more" than just custom agents...

I did think of that. Wonder how India will handle this though? I would rather that they not be another obsequious country overrun by the US.

By: runnerwallah

runnerwallah — Fri, 27 May 2005 18:13:47 +0000

Did Sepia Mutiny blog about Rabinder Singh? He's the Indian spy for the US that got smuggled out of India, all while the RAW was watching him. It happened recently. Google him for more info.

Anyhow, if I may speculate, it's more understandable for the Indian intelligence agencies to be apprehensive with the Rabinder Singh episode so fresh in many people's minds. Rabinder Singh represented a massive failure on the part of Indian intelligence agencies and they don't want anything similar to happen again, even though these are only border security initiatives.

By: Jatin

Jatin — Fri, 27 May 2005 13:59:51 +0000

its understandable that their is opposition towards putting US custom agents on indian soil, despite good relations indian intelligence agencies are a long way from trusting their US counterparts and one of their arguments would surely be that these might be “more” than just custom agents, also the indians wouldnt wanna look as if they can’t handle the situation. But at the same time it would be naive to believe that these US agents would somehow have any sort of authority at the ports, they wont be left out of sight for a minute.

By: cssw

cssw — Fri, 27 May 2005 07:42:13 +0000

I am assuming the US personnel operating on Indian soil will be Customs personnel who will prob’ly try to expedite movement of goods from India to the US. Personally, I don’t see the harm in that. However letting the US send troops over and letting them run their ops from Indian bases is a different matter.

By: underscore

underscore — Fri, 27 May 2005 07:30:20 +0000

its a bold move opposing US custom officilas on our port.

By: Abhi

Abhi — Fri, 27 May 2005 06:21:26 +0000

Well if you consider that the “CIA” in this case is an armed paramilitary force its sort of the same thing. In any case my point wasn’t to dispute that it was a bombshell announcement which I think it was.

By: vinod

vinod — Fri, 27 May 2005 06:14:10 +0000

the bombshell in question was that Â“American agents have been interrogating terrorism suspects held in Pakistani jails.

err… actually, the “bombshell” was admitting to US Troops + combat operations on another (non-combatant) country’s soil. FBI / CIA agents talking to prisoners — while a big deal — isn’t the same sort of “cat out of the bag”.