Will Vikash Yadav be sacrificed in an exchange deal over Tahawwur Rana | Faraz Ahmad

October 25, 2024

Having now disowned former R&AW official Vikash Yadav, allegedly involved in the plot to kill Canadian-US citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, stating that he is no more an employee of the Indian Government, there is apprehension in informed circles whether India may hand over Vikash Yadav to the US to be tried in the US for the alleged conspiracy.

In a quid pro quo, India seems to be striking a deal with the US government to secure the extradition of Tahawwur Husain Rana, a Pakistani-Canadian citizen, currently in US prison, charged with financing the 26/11/2008 Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terror attack in Mumbai causing immense loss of life including that of Maharashtra Police SIT chief Hemant Karkare and his dedicated team of officers, apart from many others killed in that attack.

In September, 2023, US President Joe Biden came to New Delhi to attend the G20 summit hosted by India. Also came on the same invitation Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who too took up with Prime Minister Narendra Modi the killing of Canadian Sikh citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada by killers allegedly at the instance of Indian establishment. That issue has boiled into a diplomatic impasse between the two countries now. But let it be for the time being. We’re now on the US-India exchanges regarding the alleged attempt to kill Khalistan activist in US Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

The US government has pin pointed Vikash Yadav then a RAW officer, as co-consprator-1 (CC-1) at whose instance one Nikhil Gupta, caught in the Czech Republic and extradited to the US, mistakenly hired a US agent to eliminate Pannun, claim the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) of the US and its state justice department. The plot was foiled because the so-called hired killer turned out to be a secret agent of the US narcotics department, later reports from the US disclosed. The Delhi Police arrested Vikash Yadav in December, 2023 on a complaint of kidnapping, extortion and related offences, by a Rohini resident identified as Raj Kumar Walia running a café and lounge in West Delhi’s Moti Nagar but also involved in some monetary business expanded to Dubai and other Gulf and Arab nations, according to reports. Walia himself appears to be a person of questionable antecedents, with reports of past criminal activities of the same nature, connected to the notorious Lawerence Bishnoi gang, who while sitting in Sabarmati Jail under the watchful eyes of the ever-vigilant Gujarat government, has spread his tentacles from Delhi to Mumbai to Canada, news reports emanating from Government sources claim.

After three months in jail a Delhi court granted bail to Vikash Yadav on the basis of good conduct and being a former Government employee. He was let out on April 11. Since then, nobody seems to know his whereabouts, except that his parents, while stating that he never came home to his village in Haryana, said he had called them over phone and reassured them that he was safe and there was no cause for them to worry. It is a rather mysterious situation. On the one hand the Government of India has tried to wash its hands off Vikash Yadav, pretending that whatever the US allegation against Yadav be in connection with the attempt to murder Gurpatwant Singh on the US soil, was at Yadav’s personal initiative, with no hand of the Indian government. On the other, if Vikash Yadv a former RAW agent and an undertrial in an extortion case, is hiding somewhere and is telling his family members that he is safe and sound, then logically he is being provided some sound security by someone. It can’t be the US government. It has to be some agency of the Indian government.

Now let’s try to put two and two together. The US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel told newsmen in Washington on Wednesday, October 23, “We continue to expect and want to see meaningful accountability resulting from India’s investigations into the alleged foiled plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil and certainly the United States won’t be fully satisfied until there is a meaningful accountability resulting from that investigation.”

This statement by Patel came two days after a report appeared in the Indian Express saying that officials of India and US central investigating agencies and legal departments recently held a meeting in the US embassy in Delhi. “In the meeting, which lasted around three hours Rana’s extradition was a key point of discussion…”

After showing the stick through the state department statement in Washington, a carrot was dangled before India. Important Indian officials were invited to the US embassy in the presence of equally senior officers of US investigations and legal department offering to extradite to India Tahawwur Rana, wanted by the Indian government in connection with the terror attack in Mumbai on 26 November, 2008. For all these 16 years, we never heard of US administration eagerness to extradite an accused in the 26/11 terror attack to India. Is this a bait to the Indian government to hand over Vikash Yadav in a “fair deal” in exchange for Tahawwur Rana? Will it really be a fair deal by any standards? First, in case the then RAW officer Vikash Yadav had a role, if at all, in the plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh, it cannot be without a green signal in the very least from the top. Then to blame it all on one poor soul and hand him over to the US is to make him a sacrificial goat. That’s not acceptable.

Besides, US offer itself is a bit dubious. If the US were actually sincere in handing over the guilty of the 2008 dastardly attack in which at least 174 people, including 20 security force personnel and 26 foreign nationals, were killed and more than 300 people were injured, of those involved, still alive outside Pakistan, is David Headley a half-Pakistani and half white American. David Headly had done a detailed reconnaissance of Mumbai and identified targets to be hit. He had done all the planning much before the LeT terrorists hit Mumbai. If the US government were serious about allowing India to bring to justice the perpetrators of 26/11 on the US soil, it should first and foremost hand over Headley and nothing short of that.