Modi Government Acknowledges Official Was Involved in Plot to Kill Pannun; Meta Apologises For Zuckerberg ‘Gaffe’; Modi Factor in Absentia in Manipur

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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable

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The India Cable is the most definitive daily news bulletin about all that matters to India. This premium newsletter is delivered to your inbox 5 days a week.

Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Tanweer Alam, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Snapshot of the day

January 15, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

After more than a year of silence on the progress made by a high-level committee tasked with probing Washington’s allegations in the alleged Gurpatwant Pannun murder plot, the Union home ministry today in a press release on the committee’s findings appeared to acknowledge that a Modi government official was indeed involved in the plot, but also to distance itself from the said official, whom the US has accused of orchestrating the plot. It named neither Pannun nor Vikash Yadav – the official as named by US prosecutors – (or for that matter Hardeep Singh Nijjar, whose murder Ottawa alleged involved agents of the Indian government) and instead simply said the committee “recommended legal action against an individual whose earlier criminal links and antecedents also came to notice during the enquiry”. It also recommended “expeditious” legal action against this person.

To give weight to the idea that the official was operating in a rogue capacity by hatching the plot to have the pro-Khalistan Pannun killed, the home ministry said the committee “has further recommended functional improvements in systems and procedures as also initiation of steps that could strengthen India’s response capability, ensure systematic controls and coordinated action in dealing with matters like this”.

Amid speculation of a change in the foreign exchange intervention policy by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), market sources said the stance is likely to have remained the same, with the central bank continuing to intervene to curb excess volatility without targeting any specific level or range. While the Indian unit has fallen 1.2% in January, this decline was mainly due to global factors prompting foreign portfolio investors to pull out of emerging market economies, putting pressure on respective currencies. The rupee surrendered its initial gains and slipped 2 paise to 86.55 against the US dollar in early trade on Wednesday.