A Delhi court said a deeper investigation is needed to discover whether any Indian or member of a rebel ethnic group linked to the seven foreign nationals arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) entered the country illegally and supported the rebel groups.
In an order dated March 27 by Special NIA Judge Prashant Sharma of the Patiala House Courts, extending the detention of the seven foreign nationals for ten days, the court asked several questions, “Why did the accused come to India? Why did they travel to Myanmar? What was their purpose in using drones? Did the accused use drones to provide training to anyone?”
The court said it was required to investigate whether any Indian or any member of a rebel ethnic group in India was directly or indirectly associated with the accused persons and what infrastructure was used by the accused visiting India and abroad.
The court said it agreed with the NIA’s allegations based on the contents of the case diaries and the facts of the case, which were sensitive in nature.
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The judge began the procedures at the agency’s headquarters last Friday, given the extreme sensitivity of the case, after the defendants’ imprisonment period had ended. The accused will now be presented on April 6.
The court stressed that “such and similar questions require research.”
On March 16, the court allowed the NIS to detain for 11 days the defendants, US citizen Matthew Aaron Van Dyke and Ukrainian citizens Hrba Petro, Slivyak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovsky, Stefankiev Marian, Honcharuk Maxim, and Viktor Kaminsky.
The NIA case states that the Ukrainians entered India on tourist visas on separate dates and traveled to Guwahati, before traveling to Mizoram without the required documents such as a restricted area permit.
The federal agency also alleged that these individuals illegally entered Myanmar to impart “pre-scheduled training” to Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAO) in that country, known to support terrorist organizations/gangs operating in India in the field of drone warfare, drone operations, assembly and jamming technology, etc. targeting the Myanmar junta.
The agency had told the court that Dyke and the six detained Ukrainians admitted during interrogation that they had conducted training on EAGs on more than one occasion, “in addition to illegally importing huge shipments of drones from Europe to Myanmar via India for the use of EAGs.”
