A Pakistani official has told the BBC that India has funded training for hundreds of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) militants over the last 10 years.
British authorities held formal recorded interviews with senior MQM officials who told them the party was receiving Indian funding, the BBC was told.
Indian authorities have described the claims as “completely baseless”.
The unnamed Pakistani official told the BBC that India has trained hundreds of MQM militants in explosives, weapons and sabotage over the last 10 years in camps in north and north-east India. Before 2005-2006 the training was given to a small number of mid-ranking members of the MQM, the official said.
The claims follow the statement of a senior Karachi police officer that two arrested MQM militants said they had been trained in India. In April Rao Anwar gave details of how the two men went to India via Thailand to be trained by the Indian intelligence agency RAW. In response, MQM leader Altaf Hussain issued a tirade of abuse at Rao Anwar.
Asked about the claims of Indian funding and training of the MQM, the Indian High Commission in London said: “Shortcomings of governance cannot be rationalised by blaming neighbours.”
UK authorities started investigating the MQM in 2010 when a senior party leader, Imran Farooq, was stabbed to death outside his home in London. In the course of those inquiries, the police found around £500,000 in the MQM’s London offices and in the home of MQM leader Altaf Hussain. That prompted a second investigation into possible money laundering.
UK authorities also found a list itemising weapons, including mortars, grenades and bomb-making equipment in an MQM property, according to Pakistani media reports that the BBC believes to be credible. The list included prices for the weapons. Asked about the list, the MQM made no response.
As the UK police investigations have progressed, the British judiciary has been taking an increasingly tough line on the MQM. Back in 2011 a British judge adjudicating an asylum appeal case found that “the MQM has killed over 200 police officers who have stood up against them in Karachi”.
Last year another British judge hearing another such case found: “There is overwhelming objective evidence that the MQM for decades had been using violence.”
The MQM is also under pressure in Pakistan. In March the country’s security forces raided the party’s Karachi headquarters. They claimed to have found a significant number of weapons, which MQM said were planted.
MQM insists it is a peaceful, secular party representing the interests of the middle classes in Pakistan.
MQM has 24 members in Pakistan’s National Assembly.
