Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (36 page)

GRILLED IN OPEN FIRE

A man’s faults are the faults of his time while his virtues are his own.

J.W. von Goethe.

My posting to SIB Delhi did not evoke any sense of achievement. A live fish cannot smile through its contorted lips when the chef takes it out of the aquarium and puts it on a blazing grill. I knew for sure that troubled times were ahead of me. The silhouette of fire was not too distant.

The Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau unit in Delhi has earned the dubious characteristic of being one of the handy tools, which are used for non-specific and broad-spectrum field intelligence jobs. The nature of the job varied on the immediate requirement of the prime consumers of the DIB. The variations swung erratically like an off the pinion pendulum. Some day it meant enquiries and surveillance operations against Indira Gandhi and her family members and at other times the orders were specific to targets like Maneka Gandhi, Morarji Desai and I. K. Gujral. It was difficult to specify the job. Tasks were assigned mostly on phone and in personal briefing and very little time were conceded to produce the finished product. The mad rush was necessitated by the tendency of the Indian rulers to ask for the moon and expect it to be delivered with Pacific oyster sauce in a couple of hours. It was and continues to be an errand boy’s job. Very little of classical intelligence practices are built in the very utilitarian structure of this office.

So, I was there at the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau office in Delhi, inheriting the coveted chair from H. N. Bhargava, who was pushed out because of his alleged closeness to some of the Janata Party leaders and his alleged prejudicial activities against Indira Gandhi. I did not inherit any human and operational assets from him. The only ‘friend’ to whom I was introduced by Bhargava was S. K. Jain who had earned later day notoriety as the architect of ‘Jain Hawala Scam’. I could not develop a steady professional friendship with him. On a very delicate issue he wanted me to carry a briefcase to one of the Congress leaders from Bihar, who claimed proximity to Indira Gandhi. I was offered a tidy sum of Rupees 10,000 for the job. I was appalled by his audacity and was not left with any doubt that he had used some of his IB acquaintances for such noble purposes. I declined the offer and there ended my relationship with him. He did not chase me either. I was not privileged enough to attract attention from deep sea sharks like him.

I was left with no illusion that my induction to the field unit was more of a noose around my neck. I excelled in fieldwork but I was new to the complex and labyrinthine political and bureaucratic abattoir, where either the wiliest or the dumbest could survive. I was neither.

My brush with R. K. Dhawan and Indira Gandhi did not buy me ticket to the elite club of conspirators, manipulators and briefcase carriers. I had remained where I were, a minor intelligence operator who was yet to be initiated to the magic world of under the sleeve kirsch, dentured smile and ruthless manipulation. I did not deserve the job. But I was there.

The first task assigned to me was to rummage through the old records of the SIB and to locate all papers related to Indira Gandhi and her family members originated during the Janata Party government. It took me seven days to wade through the muck and discover a couple of sensitive reports on Indira, Sanjay and Maneka, which did not portray them in delightful light.

Some papers hinted at the vaults of trusted persons with whom Sanjay’s ill-gotten wealth was secreted. A few of these papers threw amusing lights on Maneka, her mother Amteshwar and sister Ambika. They were stars by their own right, but such stars twinkled only in the hi-fi parlours.

A bunch of papers related to Sanjay Gandhi’s alleged amorous relationship with a glamorous Muslim lady and a sort of Punjabi beauty, who later gained prominence as a Congress leader. It is difficult to say if these reports were based on facts or were fabricated to malign the second son of the PM.

The papers were removed from the files and were hand delivered to the appropriate authority in a sealed cover. I had no right to ask about the destiny and destination of these records. I had no option but to literally accept the eternal fatalistic advice tendered by an ancient illustrious son of Dwarka on the sea, to the third son of king Pandu, who aspired to win back a kingdom on the Jamuna—never expect the fruit of your labour.

I would better not breach the concept of confidentiality about the documents but one of these papers had queerly indicated about likely access of Sanjay to some papers related to Indira’s personal life. It also mentioned about a query from a minister in the Janata government and expression of inability of the originator of the communication to retrieve the highly prized document. He was of the opinion that Sanjay’s wife might have had secured it in a place other than her mother’s house.

It’s not that the thought of Sanjay’s hypnotic hold on Indira did not flash through my mind and I did not try to rationalise the likely causes. But who I was to wreck my head on the alleged ‘souring relationship’ between a mother and a son and the intrusion of a ‘bahu’ in Indira’s life, of whom she thought very little about? Unfortunately I was tasked a little later to dig out those very papers. That was another disastrous episode I would like to discuss in details.

The new job required my personal attention for about 18 hours a day. I was supposed to produce, like the genie of the lamp, whatever was demanded by the DIB and often by the ever smiling and smoking SA to the PM, R.K. Dhawan. My office was supposed to function as the personal special branch of the DIB and the PMH and PMO.

I must share with the readers that my induction to the SIB and my supposed proximity to the DIB and certain personalities in the PMH/PMO had started shedding some extra gloss on my presumed bigger than life status. I suddenly found that I was a much sought after person in the social circuit and many a top bureaucrat and ruling party leaders seeking me out and paying attention to me. It’s not that they did not try to pay ‘something else’ to me wrapped in neat not too lean packets. I hadn’t yet qualified for brief cases. But I disappointed my well wishers by refusing to accept the packets. I had no illusion that my today wasn’t a reality. My tomorrows were more important. I was doing what any other officer would do in the given situation and that was an important ingredient of ‘heroism’. I was never a ‘ party creature, expert in holding glasses and Sunanda too was not ‘hi’ type to bask in the flash light of the glitterati of the mirage called Delhi’s parlour and five star lobby society. I have no doubt we had disappointed many hungry snouts, which wanted to use me for attaching themselves to the capillaries and the arteries of the providers of the day.

I must share a funny incident. My course mate in the IAS called me up with an affectionate voice and asked me over for a cup of tea at his office, which was attached to a minister. I was surprised by the cool call. Hailing from a nondescript Bengali refugee family I might have had entered into the hallowed portals of Indian bureaucracy but I was not ‘aristocratic and flashy’ enough to join the club of my colleagues who carried better money-serum and social position. I was not an ‘in thing’.

However, I was profusely entertained over coffee and cakes in the glossy room. I was informed that the honourable minister wanted to see me. It’s not that I had not known that minister. He was elected to the West Bengal legislative assembly once and thereafter did not dare to fire-walk the real test of democracy: facing and winning a popular mandate.

The reception was effusive and affectionate complaints were many. Married to a granddaughter of Dr. Triguna Sen, he said, I should have kept up the contact with him. I was not overwhelmed. I knew he did not mean what he said.

His request was simple. Could I help him by agreeing to meet an industrialist from Bombay? Why not? I had no difficulty in meeting anybody. That was a part of my job.

The minister rang up someone and told me that I should see the industrialist in a hotel suit at Taj Mansingh. The meeting took place the same day. The radiant eyes and broad smiles of the industrialist and the smooth hospitality impressed me. He was surprised to know that I was not a connoisseur of the golden liquid.

“I want a small help.”

“No problem if does not infringe my charter of work.”

“I know you’re close to Pandekar (name changed), the Customs Collector in Bombay. I want some help from him.”

“That’s no problem. The minister can call and tell him.”

“That’s not possible. Please help me by arranging a meeting with him.”

I was not unaware of the background for this minor request. I had befriended Pandekar during my short tenure with the Puri Committee. My impression about his honesty and straightforwardness had modified my opinion about colours with which the officers of this service are painted. He was fond of film; especially film making and I took the opportunity to witness the shooting of a film at the RK studio.

I did not find it easy to convince Pandekar to meet the industrialist. He had a long story to tell about serious malfeasance involved in the import of certain machineries by the industrialist. He, however, agreed to see the dynamo of Indian industry. The matter, I was told, was sorted out by intervention from the ‘higher authorities’ sometime in the first week of June 1980. In any case my friendship with Pandekar did not snap, and I gained the friendship of a person who was destined to pierce the pockets and souls of the political creatures and bureaucrats and reach the pinnacle of success in the field of Industry. The new acquaintance was Dhirubhai Hirubhai Ambani. The circumstances in which we met did not leave a good taste. But I had rediscovered this man more meaningfully in early 1993.

*

Around that time, little before the fateful June 23, I was directed to gather information on two sensitive aspects. One related to the emergence of a ‘parallel PMH/PMO’ at number 1 Akbar Road other than the office attached to number 1 Safdarjung Road where Dhawan conducted the orchestra. The discreet study indicated emergence of a new powerbase, which was opposed to Dhawan and which favoured a coterie around Sanjay Gandhi. M.L. Fotedar had emerged as a powerful figure in that coterie. They made deliberate efforts to undercut Dhawan.

Dhawan had never failed to proclaim his unflinching loyalty to the ‘Family’. He was fiercely loyal to Indira Gandhi. But very many members of the ‘Family’ did not trust him. Dhawan should be understood in proper perspective of his position in Indira’s personal and official lives and roles played by such ‘personal assistants’ all over the world. Uncharitable descriptions that he was a ‘doormat of the Nehru Gandhi family’ should be discounted as a piece of aspersion. He was no doormat. He acted as a useful prop to Indira in her good and bad days. Dhawan wasn’t the odd man out to be loyal to the ‘Family’. He had the courage to declare so. There is no dearth of ‘durbar loyalists’ in Delhi. They remain ‘loyal’ to the durbar, whosoever may happen to don the durbar crown. Dhawan was loyal to the persona of Indira Gandhi, not to her crown. Therein lay the difference between him and other ‘durbar loyalists’.

As I was saying, a parallel powerhouse was coming up at the Akbar Road annexe. For a short while Jagdish Tytlar presided over the nascent coterie. Kamal Nath often overshadowed him. Arun Nehru and pilot Satish Sharma too hovered around, but the corpulent Nehru and the other pilot with shifting grey eyes were not trusted by Sanjay.

Indira was, in fact, surrounded by the brawny elements loyal to Sanjay and putative politicians who had very little expertise in running the affairs of a complicated country, especially in the concluding decades of the 20th century. They belonged to the Jurassic past and brought in their wake the added values of muscle, crime and thuggery on which Indira had very little control. I was often pained to see her relying on these thugs than on saner elements who still believed that India could be managed in better democratic manner.

I had no way to know if my studies on the power struggle inside the PMH/PMO had pleased the authority. But the findings were startling.

Fotedar did not like my face and surname. He wondered how a dark-skin Bengali dared to steal the Kashmiri pundit surname of Dhar! Only once I tried to explain to him that we derived our surname from a town called Dhar in Madhya Pradesh. Our ancestors Dharkars had migrated to a small place called Dhar in Punjab, bordering Himachal Pradesh and later to Bengal. The original family name Dharkar was shortened to Dhar. Fotedar tossed the genealogical explanation out like he was fond of tossing out cigarette ash held in between his fingers.

A perception had started developing that Indira was on the verge of dumping Dhawan and the new blue-eyed boy of Sanjay, V.S. Tripathy (an IAS officer) was likely to take over.

I had first encountered Tripathy at the Willingdon Crescent office of Dhawan, where he used to regularly carry certain files. He did not take time to earn the confidence of Sanjay and Fotedar. Dhawan too committed a tactical mistake by helping him to reach the portals of the PM Office. It was a wrong choice. The Brahmin from Uttar Pradesh had the ubiquitous reputation of using his acquaintances as stepping-stones to higher slots. The two had developed inimical relations soon after the accidental death of Sanjay.

My assessment was that Indira Gandhi had not lost faith in Dhawan proved right. She was allowing a new power centre to grow up for Sanjay. The young leader of the nation did require lieutenants loyal to him and those who understood his philosophy of running the affairs of the state. Sanjay was on the verge of fashioning the India that he aspired to inherit from his mother in a different way, not very different from the emergency experiments. With the support of more than 160 committed Parliamentarians he could inherit India even before Indira anointed him.