Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (76 page)

I knew that I had committed the second act of ‘crime’ against the “PM and the nation”, the first one being my hesitation to help him in the purchase of support of Ajit Singh, the perennially defecting Jat leader from western Uttar Pradesh.

I realised the danger, for the first time, of serving a spineless leader. I had faced stiffer adverse circumstances arising out of professional activities, some illegal and unconstitutional. But I had received ‘protection’ from the bosses. This time around I realised that Pathak did not have the moral strength to support his junior colleagues.

I soon came to realise that under Narasimha Rao the Indian Establishment was poised to hover between the undefined region between constitutionality, legality and political skulduggery. The passenger Prime Minister was in a hurry to make hay while the Sun shone. He had allowed the system to cave in to extraneous machinations.

Soon after the Bakshi affair rattled the PMO and my intelligence operative’s foundation of 28 years I was confronted with another unexpected development. A senior functionary in the Union Home Ministry referred one of the politico-liaison touts to me, who swarm around the honeycombs in the ministry. He hastened to add that the Bombay based tout was ‘very close’ to the Union Home Minister and I should receive him cordially. I did not receive him in my office, as I was not allowed to receive any guest visitor inside the high security perimeters of the PCIU. The celebrity tout received me at the top floor exclusive restaurant of five star hotel over a cup of coffee.

The suave person was accompanied by a tall and stout gentleman, who was introduced as ZZZ Ruiya, a scion of the Ruiya group of industries. After the customary pleasantries Ruiya came straight to the subject. He alleged that I had reported to the government against his shipping unit. The allegation, he said, pertained to the mystery of a missing consignment of sugar that did not reach the Indian shores. The government had granted open general licence for importation of sugar to cope with domestic shortage. I flatly denied having sent any report and reminded him that the Intelligence Bureau was not assigned with the task of reporting on economic offences and plying of vessels on the high seas.

Ruiya did not digest the sermon. He produced photocopy of an Unofficial Report that I had sent to the secretaries in the PMO, MHA and Finance indicating reported deliberate sinking of a sugar-laden vessel by an industrial house, which required verification by the Coast Guard. They had reportedly done so as the domestic price of sugar had levelled down below prices prevailing in international markets. It was suspected that a branch of the Ruiya Empire was responsible for the economic offence. I was surprised to see the piece of paper signed by me that was smuggled out of the office of one of the three recipients.

The information had reached the IB from a source dealing with coastal intelligence and it was shared with the government by way of requesting it for further probe into the allegation.

I was assured that there was no reason to get panicky. In very certain words I was informed that both the Union Finance Minister and the Prime Minister wanted me to send a follow up report that the initial information that was catered by the IB was wrong. It was a case of misreporting. I was assured a fat amount that, the interlocutors added, could be deposited in any account of my choice or delivered in cash. The amount was too big and tempting for a person who lived almost whole of his service life in penury. I thought over the proposal and the double-edged consequences. Withdrawal of the report, which was based on field report, would tantamount to condemnation of my professional competence. My disagreement would mean infringing the third boundary of patience of the PMO and possibly that of the MHA and the Finance Ministry.

I weighed the situation and told the interlocutor that instead of offering the fat amount to me they should request the PMO and the MHA to direct the Director IB to withdraw the report. Only he was empowered to take that decision. The tout and the industrialist were very disappointed at my refusal to accept the fat amount and a promise of appointment in his company after my retirement.

A key functionary in the PMO and a former Finance Minister almost instantaneously conveyed the degree of their displeasure. I was given a tough dressing down and was branded as ‘a sensationalist’, not fit to occupy a key post in the intelligence fraternity. I was reminded that the stability of my service depended on the Prime Minister and I should be ready to pay for my stubbornness.

I did not feel like reporting the matter to the Director. But I had a duty to perform about ‘security of sensitive government documents’. I drafted a note and requested him to ask the appropriate branch to investigate into the incident of leakage of the vital communication from the IB to the government. I was never told about the result of the enquiry.

*

The disastrous brush with the mighty industrial house was followed by another incident of dirty manipulation of the government machineries by the big moneybags. It was a talk of the town that the Reliance group of Industries had developed virulent animosity towards the scion of Bombay Dyeing group of industries. In previous chapters I have mentioned briefly as to how the rivalry between the two industrial houses had taken the shape of confrontation between Rajiv Gandhi and V. P. Singh.

Around June 1994 a trouble-shooter of the Reliance Group approached me with an unusual request. The Reliance Group was bent upon proving that Nusli Wadia possessed 3 passports, a British and a Pakistani one, in addition to the Indian passport. They wanted the Union Home Ministry to initiate a criminal case against Bombay Dyeing under Passport Act.

I was approached to certify that the photocopy of the alleged Pakistani passport was a genuine copy of a genuine Pakistani Passport. I politely pointed out that a particular branch of the Ministry of External Affairs and not the Intelligence Bureau did the job of such certification. The trouble-shooter was not convinced by my argument and asserted that as head of the Pakistan Division I could easily issue the certification.

I had neither any enmity nor friendship with Nusli Wadia. He was not aware that I existed, though I was aware of the importance of being Wadia, a grandson of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and an important friend of the ‘official anti-establishment news paper group’ headed by the veteran fighter, Ramnath Goenka. I had gathered enough insight into the ‘corporate war’ between the two groups through friends like S. Gurumurthy, K. N. Gobindachariya, Monoj Sonthalia and a couple of acquaintances in the Express Group of newspapers. In fact, the war between them had tremendously influenced the course of Indian politics and rise of the Sangh Parivar to power. I have always emotionally enjoyed and suffered my closeness to the Sangh Parivar friends. This closeness factor alone did not prevent me from issuing a false certification and fabrication of few false reports on Wadia’s alleged linkages with Pakistan and the ISI.

I did not oblige them because it was a clear case of forgery.

I think I had taken on too much on my plate. This time around an old friend in the Congress party and a close associate of the Nehru-Gandhi family intervened. His advice was clear and loud. Antagonising the Ruiyas had irked the PMO and my refusal to ‘cooperate’ with the Reliance was sure to ruin my future. Career is the bread and butter of a lowly paid civil servant. My salary earned the bread for my family and upkeep of the children. I was naturally worried, perhaps for the first time.

I had more reasons to worry on the personal front.

The relationship that I had built up or was allowed to build up, with Dhirubhai Ambani was not, as they say in Delhi,
transactional
in nature. My family and I were well received at the family home of the industrial magnet and I too paid usual respect and regards to them.

But my elder son, who passed out from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad in 1994 with flying colours had suddenly decided to join the Reliance Group instead of opting for a US multinational. He said the radiant eyes and indomitable spirit of the elder Ambani impressed him and he thought he could make a nice career with them. We were disappointed, as, all said and done, the Reliance Group was a family owned corporate house and there was little scope to grow out of personal bondages to the family patriarch. In fact, very back in 1994 he was overqualified for the job. I suspected that he was carried off his feet by the glitters of the Ambanis and his love for a nice Gujrati girl, daughter of the Chief Justice of the Apex court of India.

For the first time I realised that I had faced a conflict of interest situation. My wife and I succeeded in persuading our son to quit the Reliance Group. He joined Proctor & Gamble and went away to Jeddah with a fatter salary and perquisites. The senior Ambani was hurt by the sudden action of my son and I felt that our relationship had started cooling off.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with discovery of the truth—that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

H. L. Mencken

My love for unconventional tradecraft and fascination for adventure had not blinded me to the ground realities around me. Dwarfs, who did not know how to live beyond daily supper, headed the government and the Intelligence Bureau. They lived by convenience and not by conviction.

The harsh truth was driven into my conscience by a major incident.

While chasing the ISI ghost and its connectivity with the Islamist militants we chanced to stumble upon a lead that opened up a tunnel that traversed from the heartland of India to the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu. The IB had minutely logged that the ISI was operating from its embassy precincts and from safe hideouts like Hotel Karnali. The latest lead opened up a breach in the tunnel somewhere in Uttar Pradesh, which was being used as the intermediate stepping ground for promoting militancy amongst the vulnerable section of the Indian Muslims.

We had no mandate to operate inside a foreign country. The R&AW was supposed to gather intelligence and feed the home-security organisations. That never happened. My efforts to locate some agents in Nepal were turned down. However, I decided to attack the problem from a different angle.

I had recruited two Muslim youths from a prestigious Muslim University. Interaction with them for over three months lead to a reasonable conclusion that the youths were good enough material for training and infiltration in a targeted Muslim youth organisation, Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and finally locate them in Nepal to infiltrate the ISI network. The scheme to infiltrate the youths in SIMI was approved after prolonged procrastination but the later part of the scheme was killed.

I went ahead with the Nepal errand and informally visited Kathmandu to locate a safe place somewhere near Maharajganj market area. I did not charge the department for expenditures that I incurred. One of the youths was later stationed at a safe house in Kathmandu and he came out with a dazzling revelation that the ISI had dumped a huge quantity of explosives and arms under the grassy lawns of a Muslim house near Aligarh. The cache was meant for staging spectacular terrorist attacks in and around Delhi. We had the grassy lawn dug up and the deadly consignment removed under cover of darkness. The operation also gave sufficient idea about involvement of a Muslim politician with a Kathmandu based ISI operative. But unseen political directives had shackled my hands and I could not neutralise that enemy of the country. He is still around and flaunts the banner of a mainstream political party.

Some problems arose from an unexpected quarter. Another unit of the IB that looked after Punjab operations raised an objection about the PCIU dabbling in operations, which were not strictly related to counterintelligence. My arguments that counterintelligence did not mean surveillance against the foreign diplomats and monitoring their phones did not satisfy the bosses. That the ideas of innovating agent operations and adopting other approaches were essential in pinning down the ISI operatives was not acceptable to the men who mattered. I was given a dressing down by a leading light in the Cabinet Secretariat and the affair left certain bruises in my relationship with the boss.

I was hauled over the fire and was ordered to shelve the operations forthwith. I could not do that. Some commitments were given to the youths, who were University graduates and had gathered some specialisation in computer software application. I could not simply throw them out and expose them to the virulent machinations of the SIMI activists and ISI sharpshooters. The Intelligence Bureau had not borrowed the idea either from the MI5 or the CIA of protecting its agents. Agent safety was not a part of IB’s professional ethics.

After a great deal of effort I could find out berths for them in a public sector undertaking for advanced training in computer software. These two youths were later located in an Arab country where they earned recognition as computer specialists.

*

Even a born runner cannot continue to indefinitely make 100-meter dash. He has to slow down and submit to the inevitable process of diminishing returns. I knew the theory of diminishing gravitational force. But I was not willing to slow down. That is where the destiny worked overtime to catch up with my ‘daring attitude’ towards the deities called politicians and bureaucrats. I had failed to realise that the times and personalities had changed. New work ethics had replaced the earlier ones and the bosses were busier in protecting their own posteriors than supporting the juniors. Majority of them were not interested in performance. They were expectant of offerings.

Some of them dogged me with a tool that arose out of a bizarre case involving two Maldivian women, which later earned notoriety as the ‘ISRO Espionage Case’.

The Central Bureau of Investigation, government of India’s investigative arm in economic offences had gathered tremendous clout over years and its mandate was enlarged during the regime of Indira Gandhi. The prestigious organisation was endowed with investigation rights into political, criminal and miscellaneous offences, which the masters of the day considered worth haunting and harassing their adversaries. While the IB and the R&AW acted as indirect nutcrackers the CBI was used as the hammer hand of the government. The CBI was encouraged by the government to give wide publicity to high profile cases involving important personalities and issues. The publicity itself demonised the persons and issues under investigation. The prosecution and trial process limped painfully and conviction often eluded the investigators. The CBI is not to be blamed as an institution. Like any other tool of the government the CBI served its masters faithfully, often to the constraints of constitutional liberty and legal propriety

The ISRO espionage case was actually killed by the Malayalam and English media of Kerala. The print media aligned to different political personalities and parties projected their own versions of the case. Such publicity was based on deliberate leakages by those police officers, who professed loyalty to some politician or the other. The CBI also gave wide publicity by releasing inspired stories to the national media either through discreet means or through its legal representative. The IB, as usual had not told its side of the story. The IB has never gone to the market with its merchandise and sob stories.

I do not carry any brief for the IB. However, the present narration being an intimate story of my passage through the intelligence fraternity, I owe it to my colleagues in the agency to say the bare minimum to put the things in correct perspective. I owe it to my colleagues who have been erroneously penalised and victimised by the CBI ‘findings.’ Some of them have been charged with offences they did not commit. Departmental disciplinary proceedings are still going on. They suffered because the Intelligence Bureau had failed to protect them while they were discharging lawful duties. I owe it to them to narrate the IB’s part of the counterintelligence investigation of the infamous ‘ISRO Espionage Case.’

*

The famous or infamous ISRO espionage case had arisen out of interception of a Maldivian national Mariyam Rasheeda. Mariyam was intercepted by Kerala police for overstaying her visa period and crime number 225/94 was registered on 20.10.94. Her questioning resulted in registration of case no: 246/94 dated 13.11.94 under section 3, 4& 5 of the Official Secrets Act and 34 India Penal Code. Interrogation of Mariyam Rasheeda and Faujiya Hassan, also a Maldivian national by Kerala police and Kerala unit of the Intelligence Bureau indicated that Mariyam was an employee of the Security and Intelligence Service of the Maldives. She had developed questionable linkages with senior scientists of the Fabrication and Technology Division, LPSC, Valiamala, Trivandrum; a prestigious and sensitive segment of the ISRO. Amongst the scientists the names of D. Sasikumaran, Nambinarayan, and Deputy Director LPSC had figured prominently. Further interrogation implicated Raman Srivastava IPS, an officer of the rank of Inspector General of police, Chandrashekhar, a Bangalore based businessman having linkages with the Indian and USSR space agencies, and a Mangalore based doctor and others.

The other intriguing aspect of the initial interrogation process involved certain suspected Colombo based agents of the Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan-especially Zuheira, Mohiyuddin an employee of Pakistan owned Habib Bank at Male, Ahmed Faud Zizawi, a Saudi international arms dealer, Mrs. N. S. Haniffa, Mrs. N. H. Gaffoor and Mohammad Halmil, all Maldivian nationals. A mysterious character called Mohammad Pasha, a suspected ISI operative also figured in the interrogation report.

Initial reaction of the Intelligence Bureau was to depute Rattan Sehgal, a personal aide to the Director IB and B. K. R. Rao of the R&AW to Male to inquire into the matter. These high profile officers confirmed the linkages of Mariyam with the intelligence and security organisation of the Maldivian government. From their report it transpired that Mariyam Rasheeda was on a mission to India to unearth suspected plot by the adversaries of President Gayoom to topple him. The liaison channel between the R&AW and the Ministry of External Affairs with the Malidivian authorities continued as usual.

The case, in fact, should have been handled by the R&AW and the IB could have rendered assistance for enquiries inside India. But the Director IB, D. C. Pathak decided otherwise. Since the case pertained to Kerala the DIB entrusted the case to R. K. Rathindran, a senior Keralite officer, as he was the territorial desk in charge.

A couple of peculiar characteristics of the case had emerged clearly from the very beginning:

·
        
D. C. Pathak, Director IB was enthralled by the intriguing counter-espionage case and had taken charge of the situation himself and had started issuing vital reports to the government under his signature (total 10, if I remember correctly). He did not consult the concerned counter-intelligence unit, the FRRO (Foreigners Registration Officer), the general security related branch and the PCIU. The vital reports were issued on the basis of interrogation reports, as and when these were despatched by the Trivandrum unit. These were not evaluated by Rathindran and later me, as the in charge of the Pakistan Counter Intelligence Unit in charge.

·
        
The senior IB officers of the Kerala unit and that of the IB headquarter never personally briefed and debriefed the team of Central Interrogators. The interrogators were deputed from Delhi and they did not have any local roots. Their objectivity could not be suspected, though tradecraft demanded detailed debriefing of the interrogators and vetting of their reports through ground enquiry. The Director IB was simply after earning a few pats by reporting the day-to-day developments to the Prime Minister, Home Minister etc.

·
        
The Malayalee and the English print media of Kerala had adopted pro-active stances in publishing the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day investigation. They obtained the materials from sources in the Kerala police.

·
        
The political spectrum in Kerala was sharply divided. The administrative tools and the media close to K. Karunakarn, a senior Congress leader and the Chief Minister took the side of IGP Raman Srivastava and the ISRO scientists. The other segments of the administration and political hue, belonging to anti-Karunakaran camp and the Leftists demanded the scalp of the IGP and the scientists.

·
        
Factious fighting in the police had drawn attention of the legal luminaries from the initial stages of the case.

·
        
The R&AW was kept out from the ground level enquiries and the leads pertaining to Maldives, Sri Lanka and Russia were not shared with them in time. For certain reason or other the R&AW also maintained cool distance from the case, most probably under instructions from the Ministry of External Affairs and the PMO. President Gayoom of the Maldives is a proven ally of India and Delhi did not like to topple his applecart.

*

The Director, IB summoned me after about two weeks of registration of the case in Kerala and directed me to take charge of the case. Before agreeing to formally take over an unclaimed baby I visited Trivandrum and talked to Mariyam Rasheeda and Foujiya Hassan at length in the presence of local IB officers and officers of the Kerala police, including lady officers. I also discussed the matter with the chief of the state police intelligence. My interaction with the two arrested suspects gave an impression that sustained expert interrogation of the Maldivian suspects and the suspected scientists of the ISRO and certain Bangalore based businessmen were necessary before a counter-intelligence investigation could be initiated. The Director approved this and a crack counter-intelligence interrogation team was despatched to Trivandrum.

As a precaution I had requested the TechInt division of the IB to arrange total clandestine coverage of the interrogation process by installing adequate video-audio devices. This operation was insulated from the interrogation team and Kerala police was denied all access to the TechInt team. My intention was very clear from day one. I did not want the IB to be drawn into the raging political shenanigans and media glare. Moreover, the knowledge that some one was independently monitoring and recording the interrogation process should prevent the officers from using third degree methods. Altogether 71 black and white and 1-colour videocassettes were produced by the TechInt boys, which covered the entire interrogation process of the major suspects.