Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (40 page)

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The popular perception that Maneka was thrown out of 1 Safdarjung Road is not correct. She had meticulously prepared for the event and precipitated the matter by floating a political outfit, Sanjay Vichar Manch just a day before Indira returned from London. My static watchers and moles inside the PMH had noticed Maneka and Ambika transferring out small baggage items, which allegedly contained cash, from Safdarjung house to her mother’s place at Jorbagh. It’s not my intention to go over the sad incidents that culminated in the final departure of Maneka and the political hypes she tried to build up by projecting herself as a wronged daughter in law. All that I can add that Indira was obsessed with the idea of dynastic succession and her natural choice was her own son, the one who was almost eclipsed by his more aggressive and abrasive younger brother. She had a right to make the crucial choice. Maneka was not ready to take her turn. It was not a clash of personalities. It was a clash of interests and ambition. It would be futile to paint Indira as an aggressive mother in law. She had seen her mother being tortured and insulted. Indira had, I know personally, great regards for women, especially for women in material and mental distress. She was not a tormentor of the young widow of her son. Some scribes and topical historians, however, had tried to paint the Maneka affair with the ‘emergency brush’.

Soon after Maneka contrived her exit from the Safdarjung residence of Indira Gandhi I was directed to mount renewed TechInt and HumInt operations against Amteshwar Anand and Maneka Gandhi.

For some technical reason the IB was not able to hook the residential phone of a close relation of Maneka to its monitoring box. I was directed to bug the target phone and locate a ‘safe house’ to record the transmitted telephone and room conversations. It was an impossible task. Technically the project was viable but logistically it presented insurmountable difficulties.

The house was a hub of major political activities and some of the later day political stalwarts and barons of industry (a governor included) were her regular parlour guests. I had to have the vacant possession of the house at least for two hours to implant the radio devices.

The domestic servant was won over and he offered running commentaries on the happenings inside the residence. An unexpected tip from him that his employer would be out of Delhi for two days offered an opportunity to place the bugs in the target home. The home telephone was ‘rendered dead’ in collusion with the obliging exchange staff and we waited for a call to attend the ‘dead’ phone.

The range of choice of miniature radio microphones was limited. I had opted for two long-range transmitters that would offer the facility of recording room conversations from a safe outpost 150 meters away. I was offered only two short-range devices and asked to ‘find out’ a safe house within 100 meters of the target home.

Uninterrupted power supply posed another problem. I planned out the operation in to two separate segments: bugging the home telephone and planting a device in the master bedroom. A brand new ‘priyadarshini’ phone was acquired and a miniature radio transmitter was placed inside a condenser coil. The device was activated whenever the user lifted the phone. The remote recording device faithfully recorded the voices of the caller and the called.

The expected call came next day and we gained access into the target house in the garb of telephone linemen. The new phone replaced the faulty one with the compliments of the divisional engineer.

The other device was camouflaged inside the hollowed out underside of a bedside table that flaunted an imported flower vase. The device was connected to the power line to give it infinite life.

The next problem was to locate a ‘safe house’ to place the remote receiver and recording devices. The inventory of the technical division could produce an unwieldy set that required considerable place to secure.

We scouted the area and finally hit upon the idea of tapping the priest of the temple that was located in a nearby green patch. The saffron clothed priest wasn’t a novice. He was often tapped by the static watchers of the IB to ferret out information about the famous, not so famous and infamous visitors to the target house. His attachment to the almighty god had not undermined his quest for the miniature round silver wheels, called money. He agreed to oblige after a little bit of heckling. The offering paid to the doorman to the god was quite hefty. But it met our operational requirements. I presume the information gathered through channel was shared with the consumer. Technically the operation was a tremendous success.

The hunger for intelligence input on real and perceived enemies often transcended the limits of physical hunger that burn inside the stomach. The successful house-breaking operation gave an impression to some of the aides of the Prime Minister that sky was not the limit. I was summoned and was asked to submit a feasibility report on bugging Maneka’s office at Rajindra Place and her Golf Links home. It took me about a fortnight to survey the target areas, identify the vulnerable points and work out an elaborate action plan. My assessment was simple: the IB should not try to implant technical devices inside the premises used by Maneka. She was too small a political fry to pose a danger to the mighty Prime Minister and her newly selected successor. Politically it would not be a prudent step. I was overruled and was directed to meet an aide in the PMO.

I tried to argue out that sensitive intelligence operations should not be exposed to untested officials of the main consumer. I insisted on working through the trusted channel, R.K. Dhawan. A deeper probe opened up the mystery tunnel. Dhawan continued to enjoy the confidence of Indira Gandhi. But Rajiv, the new inheritor, had different ideas about his political antennas and coterie of advisors. To him and his friends Dhawan was a ‘stenographer’; he was not the computer wizard. He simply did not belong to the new age that was about to follow the political furrows cut by Rajiv and his wonder boys. Fotedar opened up a new window to the ‘darshan’ and favour seekers and political bounty hunters.

I was advised to cultivate some flexibility in my approach to senior political persons and to learn the strategy of using multi-window operations. I did not and still do not agree with such rank opportunism, especially in the field of intelligence generation and dissemination. Bed hopping cannot be a part of trade-ethics of any intelligence community. It can at best be a part of an intelligence operator, who advances his progress in service through favour-shower and patronage-spring.

I was again ushered in the smoky room at 1 Akabr road. The aide enquired about the blueprint of my plan to bug the office and residence of Maneka. I feigned ignorance and requested him to canalise the requirement through the DIB. He did not wait for the penultimate exit of the words from my mouth. Fotedar picked up the RAX and asked the DIB about the bugging operation. After putting the handset on its cradle he looked up at me triumphantly and informed that my boss had cleared the operation and I should submit compliance report, ‘for the information of the madam’, within three days.

He walked up slowly to a steel cupboard and brought out a miniature tape recorder.

“Have you seen this before?”

“No.”

“It’s an imported tape recorder. Now take it and arrange to record the conversation of Zail Singh with Sardar Fateh Singh (name changed).”

“He’s the home minister. How can I do that?”

“It’s my information that Zail would meet the emissary of Bhindranwale at Bangla Sahib Gurdwara. Now don’t forget that you’re employed by the government to carry out orders and not to beg excuses.”

“That’s not my area of responsibility.”

“I have spoken to Rajeswar,” he declared pompously. I presumed it was a lie.

“Now get the meeting recorded and get back to me directly. There’s no need to inform your DIB.”

The suggestion was to record the conversation of the Union home minister with an emissary of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the priest turned fundamentalist militant leader of Punjab. The Punjab wool ball that was designed and architectured by Sanjay Gandhi and Zail Singh had started rolling out of Indira Gandhi’s closet. I would like to make some detailed comments on this part of India’s shameful history a little later.

I did not give any commitment to the personal aide of Indira and accept the tape recorder. I had solid reasons not to go by his advice. The emissary of the Dam Dami Taksal priest was my professional friend and he had alerted me about the apparently damage controlling effort of the veteran Sikh politician. He had recruited the fiery Sikh priest for Sanjay, who later crafted out the Frankenstein out of a minor fundamentalist priest owing allegiance to the Taksal variety of pure Sikhism-said to be Wahabism of Sikh religion.

I mulled over the developments. My analysis pointed at a sensible conclusion, it was time for me to get out of SIB Delhi and even from the IB, notwithstanding reservations of my wife and the children. I could foresee a noose dangling over my head, and I did not find any difference between the emergency days and the post-emergency regime of Indira Gandhi. I had failed to develop a liking for Maneka as a public figure because I had seen the colour of her personality. But I did not agree with the risky operation of bugging her office and residence. The lonely widow did not pose any political or security threat to Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. But people around them had gone paranoid and wanted the IB to ‘finish’ her.

The hazards involved in the operation were again explained to the brain trust and was requested to reassess the project requirement. Technical operations are more glamorous than mundane HumInt. But a successful technical operation with antiquated gadgets of the IB often involved tremendous risks.

I was advised to live up to my reputation and I was allowed to report to the controlling officer directly. He exempted me from the humiliation of appearing before the aforesaid aide, the most insensitive and ham handed operator of Indira Gandhi. I was given the liberty of choosing my own timeframe and modus operandi of implementation of the project. I obtained a final concession: abortion of the project if threatened by exposure.

The assigned task was accomplished without breaking into the premises of Maneka Gandhi. I managed to identify the pairs of wires that connected the telephones of her office and home telephones. Appropriate miniature radio transmitters were connected to the targets pairs of wires near the junction boxes and, which were hooked to miniature tape recorders. My men simply changed the tapes after every 4 hours. I doused myself with a convenient amnesia and did not bother to identify the ultimate consumer of those tapes.

The meeting between Zail Singh and Fateh Singh produced tonnes of vital intelligence on the developing imbroglio in Punjab. My hand-recorded report was personally delivered to the Joint Director overseeing the Punjab affairs. I believe that the content of that incriminating report was personally conveyed to the Prime Minister through an unsigned memo secured in a blue envelope. That was the usual procedure to share sensitive intelligence on the ministerial and political colleagues of Indira Gandhi. Besides the prime consumer only R.K. Dhawan saw these reports.

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Rajiv’s arrival was marked by the induction of corporate managerial talents to Indian politics. Derided as ‘computer cowboys’, Rajiv’s new aides especially Arun Nehru, Arun Singh, Vijay Dhar, and Suman Dubey claimed to have added 21st century modernism to the stale Indian political panorama. They were in no way connected with the Indian masses but they had opened up the windows to the dynamics of advanced geo-political concepts, liberal economic approach and modernisation of the technical inputs in governance. However, Rajiv did not succeed in matching the concepts of traditional caste, community religion based politics and rusted economic outlook with his vision of the 21st century. Indira had taken cautious steps to deviate from the traditional forces and values. But young Rajiv did not believe in taking cautious jump.

His handling of the Asiad 1982 and the eighth NAM-CHOGM conference firmly established Rajiv’s managerial capabilities. But the 1983 goof up of projection of the Andhra Pradesh election and subsequent blatant manipulations to oust NTR had added shades of doubt to Rajiv’s capability to handle ‘grassroots level politics’.

On the eve of the Asiad ‘82 I was present in one of the security related meetings taken by a cabal member of Rajiv. The security briefings highlighted the threats from the armed goons of Bhindranwale and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Force. The representative of the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau pressed for strict movement control on the Sikhs travelling to Delhi from other Indian locations, especially Punjab. I was just baptised in handling the Sikh/ Punjab affairs after the assassination of Baba Gurbachan Singh, the Nirankari sect chief, by Ranjit Singh, a hardcore Bhindranwale and Akhand Kirtani Jatha follower. This was the direct fall out of April 1978 clash at Amritsar between the forces of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Fouja Singh and the Nirankari sect, who were allowed by unimaginative Janata governments in Delhi and Chandigarh to hold its annual session in the holiest city of the Sikhs on Baishakhi day (lunar new year).

Bhindranwale did not stop with the blood of the Nirankari chief. This was followed by the assassination of Lala Jagat Narain, a patriotic journalist (his son too had fallen to the bullets of Bhindrawale followers about a year later), H.S.Manchanda, chief of the Delhi Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee and A.S.Atwal, a deputy inspector general of police of Punjab.

The need to insulate Delhi from the Sikh fundamentalists, Kashmir militants and the international terrorist organisations was imperative. But I felt that by blanket harassment and humiliation of the Sikhs we would simply push the moderates to the lap of Bhindranwale, who had already started screaming for ‘Khalistan’, a separate homeland for the Sikhs. I presented a plan for targeted screening at the entry points and positioning of joint police forces of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi at selected points to thwart entry of the suspected militants. I was overruled by other security and intelligence experts, who had gathered more layers of moss on their cranium than I did in my 14 years service. In one of the meetings Rajiv even spoke in favour of using ‘terrorising tools to destroy the terrorists’. That was my first direct exposure to the future Prime Minister of India. I gathered an impression that the sprouting of impatience and intolerance was outbalancing the growth of self-confidence in Rajiv. He had started believing in superficialities and was more vulnerable to sycophants and superfluous glitter. He appeared to be supercilious to suggestions that did not fit into his scheme of things.