Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (39 page)

I was surprisingly called upon to carry out a discreet and personal study about the electoral prospects of Rajiv. It was supposed to be an independent study. My brief included an in depth study of the possibility of sabotage by some of the supporters of Sanjay and Maneka Gandhi. I accepted the tasking by the PMH but I kept my boss apprised of the unusual request.

Rajiv’s triumphant entry to the Parliament had broken the barriers of Maneka’s patience. Indira Gandhi’s patience too had worn thin. Delhi’s gossip vine poured in unsavoury stories about the machinations of Amteshwar Anand and her younger daughter Ambika. Some of the unsavoury stories did project Maneka in bad light. The young lady too did not take care of the webs of legacy that she had got entangled into by marrying a Nehru-Gandhi. The ‘royals’ of India were supposed to maintain a façade of impeccable public image. Maneka had disappointed Indira by her personal and social behaviour. The time was not correct for a Princes Diana like personality to hit the voyeurs of a conservative Nehru-Gandhi family, last of the nineteenth century political aristocrats.

Impatience and impudence pushed Maneka further away from the family; in fact, Maneka had never donned the Nehru-Gandhi family’s tribal identity. She had remained marooned in the tribal identity of her mother. This had rendered the situation more brittle. The fragile emotional bonds between Indira and Maneka reached a point of no return when the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi legacy sensed that a rank outsider was staking claim to her inheritance. Friendly counselling and social pressure could not patch up emotional and behavioural skirmishes inside the family. That had probably prompted Indira to seek outside help to monitor the activities of Maneka, her mother and a few close followers of Sanjay who egged on the green debutante politician to challenge Indira and her new successor designate.

That’s where I came into the picture. My brief from the company boss and from the PMH was not brief. The tasking included surveillance and shadowing on Maneka and her associates and generation of intelligence on her activities. It was a daunting and detestable task. I tried to wriggle out of this tricky task by requesting that the job should be assigned to another crucial unit of the IB that worked as the personalised enquiry and intelligence generation tool of the Director. I was overruled and directed to present my project report on the new mission. I took up the assignment with great reluctance, but I had a job to do to support my family.

The mission involved intelligence generation from inside the PMH and from within the household of Amteshwar Anand. It also required a clever mixture of HumInt and TechInt operations.

Generation of intelligence from within the PMH was a virtual minefield. Mine was a known face at the Safdarjung residence and Akbar Road office of Indira Gandhi. My unit was involved in some security and intelligence coverage in and around the PMH. I was supposed to keep watch on certain questionable visitors and beef this up by subsequent enquiry reports. The VIP security unit of the IB maintained profiles of these visitors. I took advantage of the existing resources to generate intelligence on Maneka’s activities inside the PMH. A few friends of the young widow of Sanjay were wired up. That produced tonnes of appalling information on the impetuous young lady who had decided to embark on a collision course. I felt a streak of pity for the young girl, though I developed a secret admiration for her grit. All said and done she represented the new brand of womanhood, who had the courage of challenging the mightiest in the land. She wanted to earn her right through open war. Her uncompromising attitude, I thought, betrayed her recklessness. Did she suffer from a tunnel vision? Perhaps she did and perhaps she still does. In any case Maneka was in a no win situation as she was pitted against a mighty lady who was known to be a merciless tigress when it came to demolishing her adversaries.

Generating intelligence on Amteshwar was not a big challenge. My friend of Golf Links had known her in and out and was pleased to supply more grey details of his personal relationship with the lady in addition to white facts. Certain aggrieved family friends and relations of late T. S. Anand volunteered a kaleidoscopic collage of information. Amteshwar and her daughters had taken full advantage of Sanjay’s pre-eminence and harassed and persecuted them over property matters. The minions of Delhi police that were commanded by a Sanjay crony frequently visited them. A detailed enquiry was carried out over the financial matters of the family and special efforts were directed at unearthing the ‘undisclosed fortune’ of Sanjay. My officers had burrowed deep into the affairs of the family. Some of the personal details were nauseating and I did not cherish the idea of looking into the private bedrooms of individuals. Human frivolities often opened up exotic windows into their characters and in some social sectors the players exhibited extreme resilience. But in a high-strung political drama the bedroom scenes often spelt out irretrievable disaster. Sanjay and Maneka had earlier used this trick with deadly accuracy over the escapades of Suresh Ram, Jagjivan’s prodigal son. However, I was told that the reports were useful to Indira Gandhi.

Maneka was not a loser type either. She had inherited certain strong attitudinal traits of her mother and she had tasted power between 1974 and 77 and for a while after 1980 elections. She toured different parts of India as the wife of the virtual deputy and the future Prime Minister of India. The Sanjay cronies adulated her and some of the meetings at Amteshwar Anand’s Jorbagh home attended by them projected Maneka as the real inheritor of Sanjay Gandhi. Indira was not attuned to the idea of challenge to her authority. She had opted for her son and not for the daughter in law, who, in her perception was a plant in the Nehru-Gandhi household.

I was called upon to attend another dirty job. One must understand the rules of the game. There is no way out but to oblige the department and government even if the job is dirty and unlawful. I was no exception.

The
Surya
magazine floated by Maneka in mid 1970 had functioned as a political vehicle of Sanjay Gandhi. Indira considered this rag as a useful weapon during and after the emergency. Soon after relations inside the Gandhi family started fraying, Maneka and her mother entered into a deal with Sardar Angre of the RSS for selling the ownership of
Surya
to Dr. J.K.Jain, a prominent member of the RSS and the Jan Sangh. Indira was opposed to the idea and she felt betrayed by Maneka’s action. She was overwhelmed by political and communal troubles and deserved peace at home. She was haunted by one misfortune after another. But a hurt Maneka was in no mood for compromise.

I was tasked to infiltrate the
Surya
editorial board. It was an easy task. My reports and often galley proof of the crucial items were forwarded to Indira through ‘appropriate official channel.’

But Maneka was not content with what she had done with
Surya
. My old friend in the RSS enlightened me about the burgeoning political relationship between Maneka and a section of the Jan Sangh (Bharatiya Janata Party) as well as other opposition leaders. I was briefed to follow up the leads and to identify Maneka’s linkages with the saffron as well as other political leaders.

But the unkindest cut of all was the alleged decision of Maneka to circulate ‘SHE’, the censored chapter of the autobiography of M. O. Mathai. This document was reportedly in possession of Sanjay even before the emergency. But he had no intention of using it overtly to discredit his mother. But he had made it known to Indira that he possessed the vital weapon. It has never been possible to confirm these reports beyond any tinge of doubt.

Maneka had allegedly copied and circulated the scurrilous SHE chapter along with some family letters, which depicted Rajiv in poor light. I was tasked by the competent authority to trace out copies of SHE and to steal the master copy that was hidden somewhere in the office of
Surya
, now owned by Dr. J.K.Jain. I readily accepted the first task and declined to take up the second one. But I was steamrolled and was told that I should either do the job or get ready for sack from the Indian Police Service. I was ready to face reversion and take up a uniformed assignment in Bengal. But sacking with a trumped up charge would have devastated my future and family. Nevertheless, I explored the possibility of reverting back to the Calcutta newspaper with which I had started my career. I was advised by the owner that they had borrowed heavily from a nationalised bank and they were not in a situation to displease the government by offering an employment to me. I had approached the Calcutta college, where I taught for a while. They pointed out that direct entry to faculty was impossible and I was age barred. My resolve to quit was diluted by family pressure. They did not want to move out of Delhi when the kids were just settled in nice schools. Like all lambs I offered my neck to the cross bar.

I happened to discover the SHE at an unexpected quarter. Someone tipped me off that copies of SHE were in circulation amongst a group of IAS officers of West Bengal and some of them lodging in the Hailey Road state guesthouse were using it a piece of pornography. Two of them were my course mates in the Mussorie academy.

I approached one of them, who had access to the document and explained to him over a luncheon the sensitivities of Indira Gandhi over that questioned document. He understood the gravity of the situation. He directed me to another course mate and contemporary at Kalimpong. He received me well at his Calcutta residence but the document had in the meantime had passed into the hands of Bikram Sarkar (Sardar), another IAS course mate and married in a prominent congress family of Bengal. Bikram did not play a fair game. He refused to see me and sent a word that the document was in possession of C. G. Saldhana, another IAS officer of Bengal cadre.

My colleague, K.M. Singh and I drove all the way to Chandigarh to meet Saldhana. He was surprised by the untimely knock and told me in confidence that the document was still in possession of Bikram Sarkar, who had started pulling all conceivable political strings to wriggle out of the situation. My enquiries revealed that the scion of the politically prominent schedule caste family nursed a grudge against Indira and was not averse to the idea of embarrassing her by sharing the document with some Marxist leaders of West Bengal, which he finally did.

In any case I succeeded in retrieving four copies of SHE from different quarters. I was directed to submit a written report about the involvement of the IAS officers. I declined to submit a written report on the plea that they were my course mates and I believed that they had just chanced to access the document. Maneka had allegedly circulated the scurrilous piece widely written by a sick-minded Mathai. I gathered an impression that my boss had submitted a detailed report to the Prime Minister on the incident. But no harm had come to any of my IAS colleague.

Bikram Sarkar, however, took it upon himself to lobby with the Union Home Secretary and other IAS officers in Delhi to brief them about my ‘high handed’ treatment to the senior officers. In fact, I was branded as an anti-IAS creature and had become a persona non grata to some of the senior IAS officers in Delhi. The enquiry had cost me my friendship with my colleagues and Bikram continued with the tirade long after Indira was assassinated. He had later joined Mamata Banerjee and was returned to the Parliament.

Having burnt my fingers in ‘operation retrieval SHE’ I had more or less decided not to undertake the charted operation against Dr. J. K. Jain. I was given a final warning to proceed with the matter as Jain had reportedly tied up with a publishing house to bring out a reprint of Mathai’s autobiography that would include the censured chapter. My operators failed to infiltrate the inner core of the new management. Finally I was ordered to carry out a silent ‘Watergate’ type nocturnal break in and retrieve the vital original document. I requested for police assistance. It was refused. Having left with no option I accompanied by my deputy and a few trusted officers broke into the office premises of
Surya
late in the night. The market place was scantily guarded but our operation did not go unnoticed.

Indira Gandhi might have been happy on this small victory over her daughter in law, but my name had reached the ears of Jain through a channel of leakage in the IB. A couple of pro-Janata Party elements were still active in the IB and they were not amused by the latest political reincarnation of Indira. One of them was lodged in the very personal section of the Director Intelligence Bureau. He was a close associate of V. S. Tripathy, the all season IAS officer who had by now entrenched himself well in the PMO. I had access to precise information that Tripathy’s brother in law had passed on the vital information to his Janata Party contact from Uttar Pradesh.

For the second time I had earned the dubious distinction of being named by the politicians in a public meeting. The first one had happened way back in 1972 when the government of Mohammad Alimuddin was toppled by the congress with active collaboration of the Intelligence Bureau. However, this minor ‘
surya
gate’ did not roll over to any serious political crisis for Indira Gandhi. But I was marked out as an errant intelligence officer. I was not surprised when a senior IAS secretary to the government of India made an open dig at me in a security meeting. The SHE episode had made this lobby permanently hostile to me. None of them were ready to look beyond the incident and ask the service colleagues if their action of circulating a scurrilous piece of fiction by Mathai on a respectable lady had not infringed the service ethics and ordinary moral parameters. How could they imagine of an Indira Gandhi clothed in see-through muslin and perambulating before their sick minds and eyes? The whole affair smacked of sick mentality of a section of sex-starved colleagues, who happened to gatecrash into the Iron Frame.