Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (64 page)

I had no reason to feel happy with the affairs around me. But to make the best out of a lost situation I concentrated on the Punjab scenario again. But Punjab wasn’t the same playground I used to know. By the first half of 1990 the curve of violent incidents had gone up sharply. The total figure of human slaughter had jumped to 2841 in 1990 from 1396 in 1989. A significant event was the blowing up of a railway track near Ferozpur and derailment of an Army special train. The terrorists later opened fire and killed a couple of soldiers. Under instructions from the ISI the Second Panthic Committee and the armed terrorist groups tried to bring about communal cleavage. A number of attacks on Hindu targets were made by the ISI inspired terrorist outfits headed by Wassan Singh Jaffarwal, Paramjit Singh Panjwar and Gurjant Singh Budhsinghwala.

A set of new players had taken over the reins of the movement. Jasbir Singh Rode had faded into near oblivion. Dr. Sohan Singh, Wassan Singh Jaffarwal, S.S.Mann and Daljit Singh Bittoo and others occupied the centre stage. Police and the paramilitary forces matched renewed terrorist thrust by imposing their own brand of terrorism. Counter-terrorist actions often resulted in counter-killing of innocent villagers, counter-kidnapping of the relatives of the wanted terrorists and extortion of heavy ransom for sparing the lives of the young boys and sanctity of women. For a while it transpired that Punjab had become a free field for the players who preferred to play soccer with human skull. Social, ethical and professional concepts were lost in the grim game of survival. A couple of senior central intelligence operatives too took to freelancing and assumed the roles of executioners. No one in saner frame of mind could endorse what the terrorist were perpetrating and what was being pedalled as state response.

Rajiv Gandhi had left his touch unfinished, which surprisingly contained creative ingredients. V. P. Singh floundered through the muddled situation and was out long before any of his initiative could take shape, including a renewed peace initiative through Atinderpal Singh, in which I played a significant role.

Chandrashekhar was the most cavalier of the three. His idea of boldness was not based on proper study of the ground realities. He had grabbed power by the lock, but he was not destined to capture peace even by the whiskers.

Soon after assumption of power he was influenced by certain quarters to personally talk to Simranjeet Singh Mann on December 28, 1990. I don’t think he was guided by professional organisations like the Intelligence Bureau and the police chief of the state. A Prime Ministerial initiative is supposed to be a strategic move based on assessed indictors provided by the Internal Security and the Armed Forces and the intelligence organisations. Chandrashekhar, an inveterate agitational politician, suffered from two handicaps: misplaced self-righteousness and incapability to match intelligence and strategic inputs to his political scheme of things.

The political establishment aligned to the Congress had inherited the techniques of administering a vast and complicated country. The others were kept busy for over 40 years with politics of opposition and agitational activities. They simply had no clue to the bricks and mortars of the Indian Establishment.

Chandrashekhar, therefore, preferred to overlook the resolution passed in a conference of the assorted Akali Dals at Fatehgarh Sahib on December 26, that had empowered Mann to talk to Delhi on condition that India should either finally decide on the fate of the Sikh `
Quam
’ or give a free hand to the terrorists. Mann was neither an ideologue of the Sikh
Quam
nor the Chief of its factious Panthic Committees and armed groups. He was accepted as a totem and like most totems he came in the line of firing of the militant and terrorist groups as soon as the talks were initiated. The Panthic Committees headed by Dr.Sohan Singh, Gurbachan Singh Manochahal and Wassan Singh Jaffarwal disassociated from the talks. The armed terrorist groups were reluctant to extend support to Mann.

Important intelligence inputs at that point of time indicated that Pakistan was not at all interested in allowing its clients in Punjab to settle for peace. The ISI and the Chief of Army Staff General Aslam Beg had made it abundantly clear that they had two main objectives before them: ‘strengthening collective defences of the regional Muslim countries’ and ‘augmenting the freedom struggle by the Kashmiri Mohalla (neighbourhood) fighters.’ They considered Punjab as a strategic holding ground for the Indian military and paramilitary forces. Such strategic ‘holding ground’ theory was earlier tested with considerable success in the North East. The ‘political government’ in Pakistan was engrossed with the Gulf War and the ‘other government’ run by the Establishment were keen on exacerbating the proxy war in Punjab.

Rajiv Gandhi too was not happy over the direct contact between the Prime Minister and the Sikh militants. He had made this abundantly clear in a letter to the PM on January 24, 1990. To quote him, “I regret to say my information is that, far from showing any signs of improvement, things have only worsened in the last few days……It is one thing to have contacts with insurgents and terrorists at intelligence and police levels, quite another for a Head of Government to engage himself in talks without pre-conditions with parties dedicated to the dismemberment of the country.”

While Chandrashekhar was in the habit of delivering homilies he had never cultivated the patience of receiving from others. He did not blow up his top but it was made clear that the weary socialist too was running out of options.

His minister of state, Subodh Kant Sahay, aggravated his discomfiture. He directed me to open up a line to Manjit Singh, President AISSF, for exploring the feasibility of opening up a parallel dialogue. The idea was not bad but I reminded the junior minister about the other initiative of the Prime Minister. Manjit and Mann were in conflicting camps and the former did not enjoy the support of the more virulent factions of the terrorists. Subodh Kant did not relent. I proceeded after keeping the concerned senior Punjab hand in the IB informed about the new twist. The IB, I gathered, was not unduly perturbed over such initiatives. They knew pretty well that Rajiv Gandhi was sure to stage a come back in another couple of months. Some segments in the IB worked overtime to prepare the ‘home coming’ of Rajiv Gandhi.

As the most knowledgeable informed person of India, the DIB had failed again to gauge the mood of the Indian people. The
janta janardan
(plebeians) were not yet in the mood of giving another try to Rajiv Gandhi. Any way, the IB functionaries were, rightly so, engaged in assisting the police authorities in eliminating and containing the scourge of anarchy in Punjab countryside and unearthing the ‘encirclement posts’ set up by the ISI in Nepal, Bangladesh and elsewhere in the heartland of India.

My contact with Manit Singh was facilitated by XXXX Kanda, a petty trader but a large hearted nationalist. Manjit was ready to play the game and expected a ‘personal compensation package’ that I communicated to the minister. The AISSF president thereafter came out with the idea of launching a probing mission to measure the responses of the Central Government.

As an integral part of the initiative I contacted Gurbachan Singh Manochahal, leader of the First Panthic Committee and chief of the Bhindranwale Tiger Force of Khalistan somewhere near Harike. Harjinder Singh Ramdas, who had earlier featured prominently in Jasbir Singh Rode operation initiated by Rajiv Gandhi, facilitated the meeting. In the same vein I contacted Baba Joginder Singh, father of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and a senior leader of the factious Akali Dal.

The meeting with Manochahal had taken place under rather unusual circumstances. I was directed to board a boat near village Sirhali Kalan and follow the downstream of River Beas towards Harike. I took the chance because of my intrinsic faith in Harjinder Singh and dame fate, which had so far not betrayed me. It was a gamble, but it paid off. Our small fishing boat was intercepted by another fishing boat somewhere near a lake-island and was boarded by the dreaded terrorist leader. That was our third meeting. Manochahal was in favour of peace but was afraid to be the first one to lay down arms in the face of competitive terrorism and fear of reprisal from Pakistan. He did however, promise to support any move by the Central Government to hold elections in Punjab.

This time I had to attend to a personal request of the terrorist leader. He had a serious dental problem that was caused by an accidental fall while he tried to escape a police dragnet and ambush near Sohol in Amritsar district. He wanted to avail of the services of a dentist. At a later day meeting, the fourth one, I had to carry a dentist and his equipment all the way from Amritsar to a small village Gurdwara near Shero. The dentist performed the complicated treatment to the satisfaction of the most dreaded terrorist of Punjab. His face gave out an impression that he was asked to put his head in the mouth of a lion. This small mercy had earned me free passport to Manochahal until the police gunned him down.

The other two ‘militant’ leaders who were brought into the orbit of this new initiative were Atinderpal Singh, former MP, and Kanwar Singh Dhami, a Pakistan based leader of Akal Federation. Atinderpal was a ready game, as he had tasted the fruits of being a member of the Indian parliament. His faith was restored in the political process.

Kanwar Singh Dhami was a sly fox as he ever was. He was contacted at a Model Town ISI guesthouse in Lahore, Pakistan, through a mutually agreed cut out (name withheld). It was not my intention to tackle Kanwar alone. I tried to explore the possibility of sounding out a few other Sikh terrorist leaders hosted by the ISI. By himself Kanwar was a spent force. But Subodh Kant overruled me and allowed the cut out to smuggle Kanwar into Amritsar. The beginning and end of this initiative were messy. A designated political aide (OSD) to the minister was empowered to handle Dhami. To my horror the foxy militant leader was brought to the North Block to meet the minister and me. I lodged a strong protest over such cavalier attitude of the aide. But the concerned aide enjoyed confidence of the Prime Minister and enjoyed immunity from official and security disciplines.

Dhami turned out to be a bottomless begging bowl. He demanded immunity from prosecution and a fat package of rehabilitation in addition to Rupees 1 million. The minister and his political aide were keen to oblige him and pressured me to draw the amount from IB’s secret service fund. I refused to walk down to the room of M.K. Narayanan because I was not convinced about the efficacy of the talent and about the exact utilisation of the amount. I believe the minister had later secured the amount through one of his six other aides.

Dhami turned out to be unreliable. He did not have genuine access to the top militant leaders. He later spat venom against me in the media for letting him down and not recognising his cardinal contribution in bringing back peace in Punjab. Courtesy his machinations my ‘under cover’ identities were blown off to the leaders of the Second Panthic Committee and Pakistan based militant leaders, who in turn shared these with the ISI operatives. The Intelligence Bureau was alerted by a sister organisation about plans of the some terrorist groups to physically eliminate me. The IB shackled me down with a static armed guard at my residence. However, I refused to accept a personal security for my movement in and outside Delhi.

Kanwar Singh Dhami taught me a couple of precious lessons. The first and foremost lesson that I gathered was about operational policies of the ISI. The Sikh terrorist leaders living in Pakistan were not only subjected to indoctrination, but they were exposed to certain softer sides of human frivolities. Most of them were encouraged to visit professional women and imbibe the luxuries of greasy life. The austere ‘Kalisthani’ leaders, coming from rural background had succumbed to the greasy aspects of life. Most of them had lost the fervour to fight for their cause and easily connived with the ISI in making sporadic verbose statements and facilitating induction of arms and explosives to Punjab.

By early 1991 the ISI had almost stopped its earlier policy of supplying free weapons to the Sikh terrorists. The armed ‘
jathebandis
’ (contingents) were made to pay for the hardware. For certain strategic reasons the ISI had also pruned down its earlier programme of exposing the Sikh terrorists to Afghan mujaheedins and Pakistan’s home grown militant groups. In fact, the ISI had shifted its main operational theatre to Kashmir and diversified its ‘encirclement’ operations to Assam and adjacent areas of the North East.

My talks with Dhami and three other Pakistan returned terrorists confirmed my suspicion that Muslim Pakistan did not trust the Sikhs, otherwise described as ‘
kesadhari
’ (hair sporting) Hindus. They had not forgotten the haunting hostilities between the Sikh and Muslim communities on either side of the border on the before and after the transfer of power. The Sikhs had also not forgotten the Wahabi sect’s crusade against Sikh territories in the Punjab and Frontier Provinces. These inputs spoke loudly that the core of the Sikh separatist movement engineered by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and a cacophonous group of Sikh Diaspora was about to collapse. The process was accelerated by some spectacular security operations by K.P.S.Gill, the police chief and certain delicate intelligence operations of the Intelligence Bureau.

The second lesson that was pushed into my gullet was that in the intelligence and security operations theatre like Punjab the most precious ingredient was mature cooperation of the political government. Both Chandrashekhar and Subodh Kant lacked such maturity. Moreover, the political government headed by them was a constitutionally correct one but it lacked sanction of the civil society.