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Two viewpoints are in circulation about Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipping in-person attendance at the 2025 ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur and instead choosing to attend it virtually after a telephonic conversation with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim three days before the Summit.
One view is that Modi is avoiding coming face to face with his “Dear Friend” US President Donald Trump who may publicly taunt him about stopping the India-Pakistan war. More so as the India-US trade deal is not yet settled although Commerce and Industry minister Piyush Goyal has been signalling for a few months now that the trade deal will be signed “soon”.
Indian media headlines, however, claim “RIL, PSUs set to suspend Russian imports” since US sanctions on Lukoil, Rosneft make up 60% of the Russian crude oil that India is importing.
Recalibration no doubt is ongoing - exploring other avenues for oil imports, compensating trade with Russia, as well as efforts to “appease” Trump. According to a report in Bloomberg, India has indicated its willingness to spend USD 15 billion to purchase “additional” oil from the US (india-willing-to-spend-15-billion-on-us-oil-amid-trade-talks).
The report quotes India’s Trade Secretary Rajesh Agrawal informing reporters, “Right now we are at an average of USD 12-13 billion as per FY25 figures and there is headroom for USD 14-15 billion more with the current refinery configuration.”
Whether that would satisfy Trump is questionable but our spin doctors are busy building narratives that Russian and American oil imports will be at the same price! Who are we fooling but mercifully they are not saying Trump has promised American oil at a price cheaper than what Russia is charging.
The second reason in circulation is that the Indian Prime Minister could face an assassination attempt in Malaysia. This has created concerns in the public here at large. This would explain the PM’s decision to attend the summit virtually.
Over the last two-three years social media has been agog with speculation that the CIA wants to unseat Narendra Modi since he is not towing the American line, and replace him with someone more pliable like Rahul Gandhi.
A mortal threat to PM Modi’s life was also being cited as the reason why he was not visiting Manipur despite the bloodbath and violence in that state killing over 260 and displacing over 67,000; without elaborating whether some sage had warned whether his stars were unfavourably placed for a particular period of time or R&AW had smelled a CIA plan.
Simultaneously, it was also said that the Prime Minister was hesitant to visit Manipur because of local tensions that placed security at risk. Eventually, PM Modi did visit Manipur on September 13, 2025, more than two years after the violence had startred on May 3, 2023.
The Modi assassination theory climaxed when the PM travelled to Tianjin to attend the SCO Summit in China. The speculation is that US Special Forces officer Terrence Arvelle Jackson was tasked with the job of secretly assassinating Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the SCO summit. Jackson was also credited with arm-twisting Mohammad Yunus, Chief Advisor to the Interim Government of Bangladesh, for mortgaging St. Martin's Island to the US for establishing a naval base to counter Chinese moves in the Bay of Bengal.
This is the reason being quoted in social media as to why PM Modi travelled in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ‘Aurus Senat’ armoured limousine for 45-minutes for the SCO Summit in Tianjin. Putin reportedly did so to give time to the Indian and Chinese intelligence to kick in.
After the Summit the Indian Prime Minister reportedly did not return to the same hotel although where he went later is not in the public domain. The episode is being compared with the reported assassination of then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri at Tashkent on January 10, 1966.
On August 31, 50-year-old Terrence Arvelle Jackson was found dead in Westin Hotel, Dhaka under mysterious circumstances. According to the Dhaka Police, he had travelled to different parts of the country on “work related to his government”. Jackson was reportedly involved in imparting military training to Bangladeshi Army officers at undisclosed locations for at least four months before his death.
Trump is levying tariffs on the screening of foreign movies in the US, But Bollywood shouldn’t miss the chance producing a movie on the inefficiency of the CIA to jeer Trump – tasking Jackson to assassinate Modi in Tianjin, as well as arm-twisting Yunus in Tianjin (not in Dhaka) to handover St. Martin Island to Trump for a naval base.
At the same time, the director of the movie must cover up for R&AW that, as per the rumour mill, had no inkling of the CIA-plot to assassinate Modi in Tianjin and Putin personally had to come to our Prime Minister’s rescue.
Finally, the question is what precautions should the Prime Minister take for future foreign trips, particularly if Trump keeps stomping on the CIA’s tail?
Lt General Prakash Katoch is an Indian Army veteran. Views expressed here are the writer’s own.
