“India remains a strategic partner, and we are going to continue to work to improve and strengthen that strategic partnership with India.At the same time, we take these allegations and this investigation very seriously,” White House spokesperson John Kirby said during a press briefing.
Separately, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Israel’s capital Tel Aviv, welcomed the investigation launched by India into the alleged plot to kill Pannun by a purported drug dealer, Nikhil Gupta, on directions from an Indian intelligence official, according to a Justice Department chargesheet.
“India remains a strategic partner…” US on Indian probe into alleged foiled plot to kill Pannun
“I can say that this is something we take very seriously. A number of us have raised this directly with the Indian government in past weeks. The government announced today that it was conducting an investigation, and that’s good and appropriate, and we look forward to seeing the results,” Blinken told reporters.
The remarks came amid raging speculation in US circles over whether the alleged plot was officially sanctioned by New Delhi or a rogue operation involving an errant intelligence official. India has denied it has a policy of conducting transnational killing of political enemies, but US media reports closely examined the career of India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, his remarks over the years as an intelligence boffin, and previous killings of political reprobates outside the country, including in Pakistan.
It now transpires that conversations between Washington and New Delhi on the alleged plot was taking place at the highest level even as the leaders visited each others country — Prime Minister Modi’s state visit to Washington DC in June and President Biden’s trip to New Delhi in September for the G20 summit, among them.
Biden, according to US officials, personally took up the issue with Modi after Washington had sent its two top intelligence officials, CIA Director William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, to New Delhi to raise the issue. The US, according some reports, is inclined to take India’s word that it was not an officially sanctioned mission.
Washington’s “measured response, according to some diplomats in New Delhi, is a sign that US officials could have information to suggest that the plot did not go far up the chain in India,” the New York Times said in a report from New Delhi. The paper said US diplomats also pointed to “the sloppiness of the plot, as detailed in the court documents, which seems at odds with the sophistication of some top Indian security officials.”
Watch ‘Something we take very seriously’, says Blinken on Pannun assassination plot
