Opinion | Why The Nikhil Gupta Episode Doesn’t Humble Doval Or Discredit Indian Intel Agencies

The Opposition’s absence of patriotism apart, what the episode exposes is a lack of understanding, perhaps wilful, about how the espionage world works

When suspected drug and arms dealer in the US, Nikhil Gupta, pleaded guilty to an alleged hire-for-murder plot against Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a section of India’s own opposition and Leftist intelligentsia erupted with glee.

For them, it was a windfall: the nation was humiliated, NSA Ajit Doval was humbled, and most importantly, the infallibility of R&AW came hurtling down the hill.

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Attacks did not stop at India’s political leadership, they sought to casually undermine the intelligence operatives who facelessly, selflessly, and at great personal peril protect the nation.

The trolling of intel is happening without even conclusive evidence that Gupta was instructed by R&AW to carry out the hit. In a 2025 interview, Gupta told a prominent online platform that he was being pressured to confess to a crime he had not committed.

India has officially maintained that Vikash Yadav, allegedly involved in directing Nikhil Gupta, was not acting under official instruction. It said that if there was any involvement, it was the act of a “rogue individual" and not a state-sanctioned mission. The Ministry of External Affairs confirmed that Yadav was no longer employed by the government.

Some experts even suggested that Nikhil Gupta was a “US plant" to gain leverage against India and to pre-empt a potential hit on Pannun.

But India’s Left and ‘liberal’ ecosystem or parties like the Congress will have none of that.

Their absence of patriotism apart, what the episode exposes is a lack of understanding, perhaps wilful, about how the espionage world works.

Mossad, for instance, is widely regarded as the world’s most dangerous and clinically efficient spy agency. It famously flew a rescue aircraft heart-stoppingly low to rescue 102 Israeli hostages from Entebbe airport in 1976 and nearly half a century later made thousands of pagers explode in unison in the pockets of Hezbollah terrorists. Mossad operations are celebrated in books and movies worldwide.

But also well-known are its long list of botched operations. From its legendary spy Eli Cohen getting busted and hanged after infiltrating the highest political ranks in Syria to the failed assassination by an untraceable poison of Palestinian terrorist Khaled Meshaal in Jordan, Israel’s dreaded spy agency has failed quite a few times.

But those failures could never eclipse its glorious role in safeguarding the nation.

Similarly, another much bigger and influential agency, America’s CIA, has had its own share of failed operations. From the Bay of Pigs invasion where over a hundred CIA-trained Cuban exiles were killed to its disastrous mind-control programme MKUltra to the 1961 failed assassination attempt in Congo to kill Patrice Lumumba with poisoned toothpaste to collapse of the CIA spy network in China in 2010-12, the US has suffered repeated setbacks.

But even now, the CIA, along with the dollar, remains the bloodline of America’s superpower.

India’s intelligence history since the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh and rout of Pakistan has been stellar. Those trying to build a false narrative that under Narendra Modi, the performance of India’s agencies has gone downhill, must be reminded of the surgical strikes in Myanmar and across the LoC in Pakistan, Balakot bombing, and Operation Sindoor.

India is also credited—rightly or wrongly—for more than three dozen covert kills of wanted terrorists inside Pakistan and in places like southeast Asia and Europe just in the last couple of years.

IB and R&AW regularly carry out joint missions with a very high success rate. Terror attacks in the last 12 years have been contained mostly in J&K. Maoist terror is on ventilator, thanks to the brilliant work not just by India’s forces, but also by intelligence officials.

So, to use half-baked allegations, roll those into a fat failure narrative, and hurl it towards India’s intelligence agencies is disingenuous and deliberately damaging. Even if R&AW was behind a botched-up attempt on a terrorist who regularly threatens mass murder of its citizens, it does not take an ounce away from its credibility.

The brave and the best fail sometimes; only the meek never do.

© News18