According to a report in the Indian Express, London-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) activist Tariq Mir told police in the United Kingdom that the party’s top leadership held a series of secret meetings with India’s Research and Analysis Wing in the mid-1990s, documents obtained by The Sunday Express show.
Mir also alleged that, during secret meetings in Rome, Vienna, Zurich, Salzburg and Prague, the MQM leadership asked for $1.5 million in assistance.
The BBC had also quoted “an authoritative Pakistani source” as saying that senior MQM officials had told police in the United Kingdom that “the party was receiving Indian funding”. The report quoted Pakistani officials as claiming that hundreds of MQM militants had been trained by India over the last decade in “explosives, weapons and sabotage”.
But according to Mir, the alleged RAW agents never sought anything in return for the financial aid which was given to the MQM members.
The MQM which represents Urdu-speaking Partition migrants has faced allegations of being backed by India. In 1992, the party was accused, amidst a brutal military crackdown in Karachi, of plotting to create a separate state called Jinnahpur.
Few weeks back, MQM chief Aftaf Hussain (in main dispay pic) had sought forgiveness over his statement regarding RAW in which he had asked the Indian secret service to help his organisation. Hussain had termed his own statement as derogatory and said that he had tremendous respect for the Pakistani army in past and will continue to respect them in future as well.