JALANDHAR: German authorities have indicted a Sikh couple allegedly for spying on Sikh and Kashmiri separatists for India’s Research and Analysis Wing ( RAW ).

Federal prosecutors alleged on Tuesday that Manmohan Singh, 51, had been providing information to India’s external spy agency since January 2015. In July 2017, his wife Kanwaljit Kaur, 51, too had started working for it. The prosecutors also said the couple allegedly received a total of 7,200 (about Rs 5.6 lakh at current forex rates) for the information they provided to their “handler” stationed in Germany.

This is the second such case. In July 2014, a German court had indicted one Ranjit Singh for collecting information on the Indian community there and supplying it to the consulate-general of India in Frankfurt. The court held that he committed an offence not only by disregarding the sovereignty of Germany but also by cooperating “conspiratorially” and “actively” with RAW. Ranjit had told the court that he was a member of All-India Sikh Students Federation.

Manmohan Singh work- ed as a journalist for a Sikh channel in Germany. Before that he was, allegedly, close to Sikh radicals.

On April 1 this year, police in Mohali arrested five Sikh men claiming that they were part of a module of Babbar Khalsa and were in touch with Ranjit Singh. AIG-special cell Varinderpal Singh had claimed they were planning to target Hindu leaders and Dera followers in Sirsa.

His brother Balwinder Singh confirmed it was same Ranjit Singh who was convicted in Germany. “Ranjit Singh managed to reach Germany as he was wanted here but he became the victim of a conspiracy there by ‘fake Khalistanis’, who are in cahoots with Indian agencies and got implicated,” he said.

