Police in Germany has arrested an immigration official for allegedly spying on members of the country’s Sikh community at the behest of an Indian intelligence agency.
The 58-year-ol accused, identified by the initials T.S.P. has been charged with espionage for a foreign agency for which he faces a jail term of up to ten years, news agency AFP reported.
Prosecutors said in a statement that the accused was involved in “espionage activity and violation of professional secrecy rules in 45 cases”.
The German federal prosecutors said the T.S.P. had accessed database and passed on information about suspected Sikh extremists, while he was working at an immigration office in the western town of Ostwesfalesn.
He was detained in the town in North Rhine-Westphalia state on February 17 and has been in custody since then.
Federal prosecutors filed their indictment on September 7 at the state security division of the Superior Court in Berlin, but only released their statement almost two weeks later, on Tuesday.
Last year, India took up the issue of presence and purported activities of individuals and organisations linked to alleged extremist Sikh organisations operating in India.
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