Pakistan High Commission staffer asked to leave India with his family in 48 hours

New Delhi: India declared on Thursday Pakistan High Commission staffer Mehmood Akhtar “persona non-grata”, and asked him to leave the country with his family in 48 hours, a day after he and two Indian co-conspirators were caught in Delhi on espionage charges.

The two Indians — Maulana Ramzan and Subhash Jangir of Rajasthan — were booked under the Official Secrets Act and sent to police custody for 10 days. A third person, Shoaib, part of the ring, was detained in the border state, and was being brought to Delhi.

The action coincides with rising tension and fatal border skirmishes between the two nuclear-armed countries after terrorists killed 19 Indian soldiers last month, prompting India to launch a global diplomatic offensive, and carry out anti-terror surgical strikes across the LoC.

The police caught Akhtar receiving sensitive documents pertaining to the deployment of the Indian military and paramilitary forces along the Indo-Pak border from the two Indians working for Pakistan’s spy agency ISI.