Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (18 page)

My assessed view on the Naga—Pakistan connectivity and Pakistan’s strategic intervention to destabilise the North East was vindicated. R.P. Joshi had in the meantime replaced M.N. Gadgil. He was an earthly person but was new to the intelligence fraternity. He valued my input and recommended me to Delhi for a special award. I think that my officers L. Hungyo, Lakhinder Singh, Mani Singh and a few other young and daredevil junior officers deserved the kudos. A couple of officer from the Technical Unit of the IB too deserved special mention. The VHF interception sets supplied by IB’s technical division were exploited to the maximum advantage in intercepting radio communications of the Naga gangs.

*

I did not know that one of these sets would come to some other dubious use. One fine afternoon my officer at post MS 44, half way between Imphal and Tamenglong, walked into my office with two audiotapes in his pocket. He had chanced to intercept the VHF conversations between the HQ formations of the 31 Mahar and its patrol parties as well as with 59 Mountain Brigade at Leimakhong.

We must revert back to young Angad for a short while. His battalion priest claimed to possess
tantrik
powers. He had occasionally led some of the patrol parties to successful interception of the militants and recovery of some weapons. He adopted a unique modus operandi to penetrate the world of jinns and goblins. He normally sat in his worship room and spoke into a microphone under assumed trance. He guided the Mahar patrol parties through VHF communication to near and distant villages in pursuit of the rebels.

On that particular day Angad took out a patrol and was guided by the
tantrik
to the residence of a suspected militant. The priest asserted that his goddess had given him sure vision of existence of an arms cache in the residence of the militant. Angad stretched the operation literally too far by hanging the villager upside down and finally killing him in the process of domineering third degree treatment. Angad panicked. The headquarter formation of the 31 Mahar too panicked. They burned the body of the villager and dumped his bones in a nearby river.

Replay of the tapes sent shivers of fear and anxiety. A flow of pity ran through my mind for poor Angad. I reported the matter to the IB and decided to play it cool. I did not like the idea of embarrassing Brigadier S. K. Sinha for whom I had developed a healthy respect. His intellectual bent of mind often fascinated me.

But the village elders had something different in their minds. They approached the Chief Minister Md. Alimuddin and the Lt Governor D.R. Kohli. T.S. Murthy summoned me for a meeting in the Raj Niwas. My professional integrity hindered my earlier decision to play cool. I shared the real information with him and conveyed that the tapes were still with me. The Lt. Governor deputed DIG Quinn and T.S. Murthy to my office to listen to the tapes and take out transcription. I obliged them after consultations with Kohima. The results were devastating.

Brigadier Sinha drove down to my residence and requested for the copies of the tapes. I parted with copies of the tapes after obtaining clearance from Delhi.

I was later informed that the Commanding Officer, his number two and Angad were cashiered from service. Angad had to undergo a stint of imprisonment. The 31 Mahar was disbanded.

I must admit that Brigadier Sinha had not pressured me at any point of time to distort the evidence. He played a fair game and the Lt. Governor also played according to civil rules. He later paid a visit to the affected village to express condolences to the bereaved family.

*

I cannot probably leave my Manipuri Naga friends without brief references to a couple of important personalities. Some of them are still around and I have no hesitation to equate them with our top mainland nationalists and freedom fighters. They have and some of them still are waging their own kind of war against the forces of disintegration and protecting the freedom of our country.

My acquaintance with Abraham (not real name), an important member of a minor Naga tribe inhabiting the southern district of Tengnoupal (now Chandel) had come about accidentally.

Madhu Singh was driving the antiquated office van at a breakneck speed along the national highway from Karong to Imphal on a wintry night of January 1970. I had walked about 18 kilometres that evening to keep a rendezvous with the Midan Peyu of Manipur North, which encompassed the Mao, Maram, Zeliang and Tangkhul inhabitant areas with strong pockets of Kuki presence. I was dog tired and had asked Hungyo to keep his eyes open when I tried to take a catnap.

“Sir, wake up,” Hungyo pushed me rather jerkily; “There are people on the road. They could be Naga hostiles.”

I looked out with an uncertain speculation. Three human figures waved hands and signalled for stopping the vehicle. Well! They were not Naga hostiles. I was sure about that. In those chivalrous days of insurgency the Nagas did not attack civilian vehicles and they did not loot the innocent passers by. The criminals had not yet taken refuse in the insurgent outfits. The area was generally crime free. However, I gripped the automatic pistol and asked Madhu to stop near the verge.

A weary face approached me and narrated his problem. His uncle, he said, was hurt in an accidental shooting while hunting spotted deer in the nearby forest. Could I help him to drop the injured man at his nearby village home?

Hungyo took over and after conversing in Manipuri he conveyed that Abraham was a respected elder of a minor Naga community and lived nearby with his wife, a nurse in the sub-divisional hospital. We dropped him at his wooded home and were greeted by Mrs. Abraham with hot tea and some cakes.

After a couple of days of the incident I received intimation from Kohima to mobilise my agents for covering an important meeting of the
Tatar Hoho
(lower house of the underground Naga parliament) scheduled to take place at Oking. Oking did not exist. The name was assigned to the roving capital of the Naga underground government. Till that point of time the IB set up in the North East did not have direct access to any member of the
Tatar Hoho
.

I approached my Midan Peyu friend hoping that he would be a special invitee to the Hoho meeting. He did not reply through the emissary and expressed wish to meet me below the forest of Ruvunamei village at 4 a.m. The rendezvous suggested was odd. The forested patch he indicated was within the range of rifle shots from the Sikh Light Infantry unit at Mao Songsong. Nevertheless, I was assured that the assigned time was the best for a cat-paw powwow, as the security forces did not venture out before seven a.m.

I was guided to the spot by my officer C. K .P. Sinha. Npfrumo (not real name), my friend the Midan Peyu, was seated there in expectation of the bottle of Cutty Shark that I normally carried for him. He welcomed the bottle at any point of day and night.

After narrating the importance of the ensuing
Tatar Hoho
meeting he whispered into my ears to approach Abraham to cover the meeting. He was one of the ten Hoho members from Manipur.

“Are you serious? He lives over ground.”

“That’s the best cover. Go after him. Treat him gently. He is an old sepoy of the INA.”

“How come?”

“That’s an old story. As a student in Calcutta he had come in touch with Subhash Bose. He had walked down to Mandalay to join his dream hero when the INA broke through the British lines.”

He spoke in a steady voice while munching a piece of smoked meat.

By 5 a.m. Npfrumo had finished the bottle and was ready to melt into the verdant forest. We adopted a different route and reached the
dak bungalow
after a tortuous hour-long march.

Back to Imphal I requested Hungyo to arrange a meeting with Abraham. The aged couple did not hesitate to receive and offer me nice fruitcakes, and flavoured tea.

Abraham did not protest when I whispered that I knew his real status in the underground Naga outfit. Rather he lapsed back to his Calcutta days and his smart stint of love affair with a Bengali girl. We had a hearty laugh and finally stood under a portrait of Subhash Chandra Bose and agreed that we should fortify our friendship by frequent but discreet visits. He agreed to visit Dihoma, in the heart of the Angami country, to cover the
Tatar Hoho
meeting and requested me to defray an expenditure of rupees three hundred.

Kohima did not take my offer seriously and insisted that before sanctioning I should reveal the identity of the Hoho member. Delhi too reacted in the similar manner. I was not willing to disclose the identity of my new friend, as I was afraid of leakage from Kohima office, especially by an officer posted in Dimapur. I defrayed the expenditure from my pocket and launched Abraham with as good a briefing as I could give based on my limited knowledge of the Naga affairs.

Abraham returned after two weeks with an avalanche of intelligence on the affairs of the NNC, NFG and the Naga Army supported by authentic documents. It took me three days to sift through the materials and compile a 30-page report to Delhi and Kohima. I was given to understand that Abraham was the first Naga to offer a full coverage of any Hoho meeting in last ten years. Finally an amount of seven hundred was sanctioned for the operation which was followed by an appreciation letter from Delhi.

Our warm relationship, besides the professional tie, continued till I left Nagaland. Abraham contacted me again in October 1974 at Calcutta when he revisited his city of love for medical treatment. Sunanda accommodated him at our residence and we organised the best medical treatment for him at the Presidency General Hospital. He stayed with us for 15 days and enthralled us with stories of his glorious days with the INA. That was my last meeting with the old guard.

I must admit that Abraham, assisted by Kadunang Zeliang (not real name), the underground Naga Army chief of the Zeliangroung areas had rendered tremendous services in limiting the underground movement in Tamenglong district of Manipur and to some extent the fringe areas of the N.C.Hills. In Abraham I had found a staunch Indian nationalist, who was discarded by independent India, like many other freedom fighters in the North East. He had understood the futility of waging a war against the government of India. But he insisted that the Nagas, a proud people, should be helped to come out of the stranglehold of some of the Pakistan and China inspired leaders and the machination of the certain Church functionaries owing allegiance to the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society (ABFMS), which was headed by Billy Graham.

I must flout the norm laid down by the intelligence fraternity to acclaim the cardinal services rendered by certain Naga and non-Naga leaders.

Rishang Keishing, a born socialist turned congressman, K.Envy, Stephen Angkang, Arthur Luikham, all Tangkhul Naga leaders, had rendered exemplary services in containing the Naga separatist movement in Tangkhul area. Some of them had happened to taste the fruits of political power. I am still in touch with some of them.

In the non-Naga areas nationalist leaders like N.Gouzagin, Holkhomang Haokip, Dinglien Sanate, Paokai Haokip, Mono Moyal and K. Kakuthon helped me in containing the Naga and the MNF thrust in the undivided district of Churachandpur and the bordering district of Tamenglong and Jiribam. They were not professional friends. They did not require the paltry secret service amount that IB could offer. They were motivated by the concerns of their own security. I had succeeded in erecting a seemingly granite wall between the Non-Naga tribals of Manipur and the Naga and Mizo insurgents. The hills of Churachandpur used to be safer than Mumbai’s Chowpatti beach.

Alas! The subsequent representatives of the IB and the functionaries of the state government did not maintain the edifices that were built over years. It is no more a joke when one happens to hear that the NSCN (IM) has expanded its orbit of operation to Sugnu, Chandel and as far as the hills of Churanchandpur and that the Meitei militants have rooted themselves in the hills around the valley. The heroic nationalists have started fading into the background making way for the political traders and greedy bureaucrats. World changes, but in the North East it has changed at faster paces and not for the better.

I should also make it clear that the mainstream of the Meitei society, though alienated, were wedded to the historical and cultural ties with India. Most of them had welcomed the merger with India. Only a few obscurantist and revivalists dreamt of returning to the golden days of Meitei kingdom.

Besides the stalwarts like Dwijamani Dev Sharma I had encountered staunch Indian nationalists in Moirang Koireng Singh, H.Nilomani Singh, R.K Ranabir Singh, R.K.Birachandra Singh and a couple of CPI leaders, amongst whom Meghachandra Singh deserves special mention. The redoubtable journalist L. Joychandra Singh too played a prominent role in spite of humiliation heaped upon him by Baleshwar Prasad.

R.K Madhuryajit Singh, an official with the Special Services Bureau, played a heroic role, though his sons R. K. Ronen and R.K. Meghen had drifted to the camps of the Meitei revolutionaries. R.K. Meghen (Sana Yaima) later became the general secretary of the United National Liberation Force and went to Burma in search of training and weapon. Madhuryajit had arranged my meetings with Meghen and Ronen and I tried my best to win them over to the mainstream. But they were already in touch with certain agents of the Pakistani ISI and the Chinese State Security Bureau. Th. Muivah too had cast a spell on them. They firmly believed in the possibility of attaining independence from India and setting up a socialist republic for the Northeastern tribal groups. Muivah, the self-styled later day Phizo, had initially brought the Meitei youths in touch with the Chinese. His vain claim of a greater Nagaland is being erroneously pampered by some ill-motivated bureaucrats and a few easy-shot-seeking politicians.