The burning question of an alleged plot: Why would India take the risk?

Page after page of detail, the indictment unsealed in New York this week details a chilling plot: A criminal tried to arrange the murder of a Sikh American on the orders of a government official in India. American soil.

As the scheme unfolded, court documents said, it only became more brazen. When a prominent Sikh was shot in Canada in June in what prosecutors call a related killing, the officer was told to speed up, not slow down, in New York, the indictment said. And he was told to continue even as India’s Prime Minister was on a red carpet visit to Washington.

The plot was ultimately foiled, the indictment said. But the damning narrative leaves open a burning question: why would the Indian government take such a gamble?

The Sikh secessionist movement targeted in the plot is a shadow of what it once was and poses little more than a minor threat to India’s national security, even as Indian officials see a new generation of Sikhs in the diaspora as more radicalized advocates of the case. Pursuing a vocal American activist in the movement appears to pose a risk to momentum in US-India relations as New Delhi expands its trade and defense ties with Washington in an unprecedented manner.

The United States’ intense courtship of India as a counterbalance to China may leave the Indian government feeling like it can do little to sever ties. But many diplomats, former officials and analysts in New Delhi are looking at two other possible explanations for the plot: that it was either sanctioned from above in pursuit of India’s domestic political agenda, or was the work of a rogue government element seeking to fulfill the wishes of political bosses.

The US response to the plot so far, in which officials have privately taken their concerns to India, suggests it may be just a wrinkle in the relationship. That measured response, according to some diplomats in New Delhi, is a sign that U.S. officials may have information indicating that the plot in India has not advanced far.

These diplomats also point out the sloppiness of the plot, as detailed in the court documents, which appears to be at odds with the sophistication of some top Indian security officials. The indictment states that the plan was foiled by a U.S. government informant.

Those who suspect a more coordinated plot note that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as he heads to elections early next year, has seen his tough-guy image bruised by major Chinese incursions into Indian territory that have exposed his country’s relative military weakness.

By going after Sikh separatists in Western territory, officials may have sought small victories on new frontiers to help boost Modi’s strong image among his supporters, diplomats, former officials and analysts said.

India would operate in the gray areas of crime and middlemen and ensure its denial, while still sending strong signals to Modi’s information warfare network at home.

India’s intelligence services have long been accused of orchestrating targeted killings in the country’s immediate neighbors, where a chaotic environment typically produces little blowback.

But India has now shown hubris in thinking that what worked in places like Pakistan would also work in a place like the United States, said some observers, most of whom asked not to be identified because of the atmosphere of fear and retaliation in India. Today. The result—a plot against a U.S. citizen, foiled by a U.S. government informant and exposed in federal court—is an embarrassing and damaging development.

Analysts said the structure of Mr. Modi’s government could potentially explain elements of the plot. Mr. Modi’s top lieutenants often sit in silos and sometimes act unilaterally. And its national security adviser, Ajit Doval, a highly experienced and complex figure on the Indian political scene, is known not as a shaky military and diplomatic savant but as a former domestic intelligence chief with a penchant for covert field operations.

“Crucial parliamentary elections are months away,” said KC Singh, a former Indian ambassador. “The BJP’s hyper-nationalism is playing well at home,” he added, referring to Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

Mr Singh said the Modi government’s expansion of the Sikh separatist issue, and the pursuit of its most vocal elements as targets worth any price, was part of a pattern to portray Mr Modi as the protector of the nation. While the revelation of the plot may be embarrassing globally, within India it sends the message that the government is working to neutralize the threats.

India has declared Sikh separatists abroad terrorists, while Western countries see them as activists who have sometimes crossed a line into calling for violence but whose right to freedom of expression is protected by law. But the activists’ belligerence, including attacking Indian diplomats with “blatant and implied violence”, has only made matters worse, Mr Singh said.

“The stage was set for an accident,” he said.

India’s foreign ministry said it considers the allegation a matter of concern and the government has appointed a high-level commission of inquiry to investigate it.

An Indian security official with knowledge of the developments dismissed the idea that any plot would be officially sanctioned, saying Indian agencies have strong controls to prevent rogue elements.

Opinions were divided among analysts and diplomats in New Delhi over how high up in the leadership officials would have known of a plot like the one described in the indictment. Some said the details in the court documents could point to the work of a rogue element. But most said that because of the risks and the setting – a friendly country of strategic importance at a particularly sensitive time – such a plot would have required very high-level approval, and would have been difficult for rogue actors to conceal.

At those top levels there are civil servants who sometimes appear to be operating changing numbers.

S. Jaishankar, Mr. Modi’s foreign minister, is the face of India’s diplomatic rise and strategic calculations, and is widely praised for his geopolitical acumen. In speeches and interviews, he eloquently advocates that India forge its own path by dismantling arcane and unfair global structures.

But as a former diplomat who only joined Modi’s party and government after the prime minister won a second term in 2019, he remains a relative newcomer to the inner political circle.

At the center is a more trusted and shadowy lieutenant who has been at Mr. Modi’s side since he took office in 2014. The official, Mr. Doval, the national security adviser, occupies a unique position: a great strategic thinker, albeit one with fingers still deep in security operations after decades as an intelligence officer.

Like many senior spies, Mr. Doval, 78, is the subject of much lore. He has made a name for himself in the very issue that is now coming to the surface again: countering the Sikh separatist movement. Mr Doval was reportedly a key official in the local intelligence agency involved in operations to quell the Sikh insurgency in the Punjab region at its bloody peak in the 1980s.

After a storied career filled with stories, true or exaggerated, of secret triumphs, he retired in 2004 as head of the Indian Intelligence Bureau, which handles domestic intelligence.

Since Mr. Modi appointed him as National Security Advisor, Mr. Doval has preferred a field approach to his job over the traditional academic approach familiar in the American system, and especially in the Indian system.

He has often appeared in the restive region of Kashmir and in neighboring countries beset by political wrangling. He is seen as India’s ultimate voice on issues in India’s neighbors, and in the broader region stretching to Central Asia and Russia, essentially copying some of Mr. Jaishankar’s work as a top diplomat.

“To be clear, Modi is his own ‘brain’ on all policy matters. And officials like Doval and Jaishankar are just implementers,” said Bharat Karnad, an Indian national security expert affiliated with the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research. “That said, the Prime Minister never deals with simple issues.”

An article Mr Doval wrote in 2011, when he was out of government service, could provide a glimpse into his thinking on Sikh separatism, which diplomats say remains an emotive issue for his generation of officers, who witnessed an era of violence. He advocated a proactive approach to national security, focusing on a “proper, determined response” rather than emphasizing analysis.

“We focus disproportionately on the threat – its intensity, manifestations, damage caused, etc. – rather than on the response required,” Mr. Doval wrote. “National security essentially concerns what the state does or should do to effectively counter anticipated threats, both at the strategic and tactical levels.”

Sameer Yasir research contributed.