Soviet Envoy Shot to Death in New Delhi

Two gunmen riding a motorcycle shot and killed a Soviet diplomat and injured his wife and chauffeur today as they drove near the Soviet Embassy, police said. The killers escaped.

The slaying came five days after the mysterious disappearance of another Soviet diplomat, and police said the two events might be linked.

Police spokesman Thakur Jagdish Singh said Valentine Khitzichenko, 48, an engineer and staff member of the embassy’s economic section, and his wife were returning from a market when the two men with automatic pistols fired at least six shots into their car.

Khitzichenko’s wife, Nina Aleseevna, 43, and the driver were treated at a New Delhi hospital and released, Singh said.

Soviet Embassy spokesman Vladimir N. Tsatsyn said he had no indication why Khitzichenko was killed.

New Delhi’s police commissioner, Suryakant S. Jog, told a news conference that police suspect the slaying is linked to the disappearance Sunday of Igor Gezha, 37, a third secretary in the Soviet Embassy’s information department, who vanished after he went jogging in a New Delhi park.

Jog said the nationality of today’s assassins was not known, but he quoted witnesses as describing them as having “fair” or “wheatish” complexions.

Police questioned several Afghan exile groups here in connection with the first Soviet diplomat’s disappearance.

Khitzichenko’s slaying also comes two months after the unearthing of a major spy network in India involving foreign diplomats.

Eighteen people, including government officials and employees, have been arrested for alleged participation in a ring supplying copies of classified government documents to foreign embassies.

France’s deputy military attache was recalled to Paris in connection with the case. Unconfirmed Indian news reports said diplomats from the Soviet Union, East Germany and Poland also were involved.