New Delhi: Two top intelligence officials working at the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi returned home on Tuesday after an ISI officer caught by Delhi Police last week blew the cover off an elaborate spy ring operating out of the mission.
Top sources told News18 that Pakistan is recalling altogether nine of its intelligence officers working out of the high commission after the detention of spy Mehmood Akhtar last week.
Trade counsellor Syed Farruq Habib and press officer Mudassir Cheema went home by the 3.30 pm New Delhi-Lahore flight on Tuesday. Habib and Cheema were among the four intelligence operatives named by Akhtar in his confession that was videotaped. He had also named Farruq’s deputy Khadim Hussain and Major Shahid Iqbal.
Syed Farruq Habib was functioning as the station chief of ISI in the high commission, Indian intelligence sources told News18.
Akhtar, who was nabbed by Delhi Police outside the Delhi Zoo on Friday, had returned to Pakistan on Saturday after he was declared a “persona non grata”. In a tit-for-tat move, Pakistan expelled Surjeet Singh, an Indian employee working at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, for "conduct not in accordance with his diplomatic status”. Singh returned to India on Saturday.
A few days ago the Pakistan daily Dawn had reported that Islamabad was pulling out from India four of its officers posted in its High Commission in New Delhi.
Akhtar, now back in Pakistan, told Dawn that he had given the statement about other ISI officers under duress.
"They took me to a police station after detaining me where I was forced to read out a written statement provided by them in which the names of the four officers were given and was told to state that they belonged to Pakistan's intelligence services," he told Dawn.
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