Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (57 page)

The other important instance of use of ‘reverse honey trap’ by another Pakistani diplomat involved the daughter in law of a reputed arms peddler and defence contractor. A mother of two and the emotionally depraved lady was hooked by the diplomat in a five star hotel. The intimacy had led them from the lobby to the rooms and a guesthouse in prestigious Sundar Nagar locality, owned by a reputed Muslim family of Uttar Pradesh and patronised by the Pakistan High Commission. It is a crime to disturb persons engaged in the acts of stealing joy. But my nasty job had compelled me to record some of their intimate meetings on celluloid.

I pitied the otherwise wonderful lady, as I was aware of the rogue lifestyle of her husband. This particular lady was a genuine victim of her tormented emotions. We assessed the damage potential of this ‘reverse honey trap’ and came to a conclusion that the lady had passed on several pieces of sensitive defence related information. She had even organised two meetings of the Pakistan diplomat with a serving Major General of the Indian Army (now retired). The decision at the top level was to request Islamabad to quietly withdraw that senior diplomat and to sound a personal warning to the concerned lady. I was tasked with the later unpleasant duty, as I happened to know the family.

The initial reaction of the lady was adverse, though she served me tea in hand painted china and the softest cake from Oberoi Hotel. I did not have to act crudely and threaten her to witness a video rerun of her exploits. She got the message and broke down in tears. I promised her to consign the videotapes to IB’s archive and to protect her secrets for the sake of her two lovely kids. She honoured my professional commitment by agreeing to snap her relationship with the diplomat and by accepting me as her ‘rakhi’ brother. I maintained that tender relationship of Hindu society and was given the honour to attend her daughter’s marriage a couple of years ago. The tormented lady, who wanted to feel happy by stealing pleasure, expired in 1999. Her son had personally dropped in at my modest place to invite me to her last rites. I appreciated her courage. She did not end up jumping from the top floor of a posh hotel and did not slip into perpetual sleep. She fought back against her erring husband and lived as long as life force was required to ensure happiness of her children.

Use of ‘honey trap’ and ‘reverse honey trap’ by intelligence officials and diplomats is not unique to Pakistan. A few other diplomatic Missions in Delhi had successfully exploited the time tested tradecraft tool, even against important defence and intelligence targets.

This luscious aspect of intelligence vocation is not my thrust area. But I would like to mention a successful use of ‘honey trap’ by PCIU against a very aggressive Mission based Pakistani ISI operative. This particular operative had penetrated various defence related targets. The traditional tradecraft applications by the PCIU had failed to nail the ISI operative, who in real life was a junior commissioned officer of Pakistan army.

His behavioural peculiarities were systematically studied for over a period and it was found that he was fond of certain lady from the walled city of Delhi. This beauty was recruited by the PCIU and was ‘educated’ to learn a few trade secrets. She knew her trade of taking partners to bed very well. A trap was laid at a pre-selected rendezvous and the ISI operative was caught fabulously on the celluloid. The materials were later used to India’s advantage and the ‘educated mole’ had succeeded in penetrating several layers inside the high security Pakistan High Commission premises. That was a unique success ever achieved by the Intelligence Bureau.

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It’s impossible to chronicle the entire spectrum of Indo-Pakistan intelligence war in the present volume. But I must mention another area of serious mismanagement by the Indian governmental and administrative authorities.

Influx of foreign national to India, especially from Bangladesh and Nepal has generated enough political steam, often very ugly steam in West Bengal and Assam. Our political leaders, including the latest BJP brand, have been eloquent on this sensitive issue. But they have done precious little to remove the anomalies. A few sincere efforts have been opposed by the ‘secular’ political forces, which have used the slogan of ‘secularism’ as ‘apartheid of minoirtyism’.

My concerns are, however, related to the Pakistani nationals who visit India to meet relatives and for shallow penetration trading purposes. The major immigration point at Attari in Punjab was in shambles. Corruption prevailed at all conceivable levels. The PCIU had insisted on installation of computerised immigration clearance at Attari. After prolonged procrastination a system was installed by the NIC, a government owned IT organisation. Some efforts were made to link up the system with the Indian Mission in Islamabad and the Home Ministry in Delhi. It worked for a while but ‘stalled’ because of lack of trained work force and unwillingness of the ‘police personnel’ on deputation to operate the system. The NIC also wanted to pedal their own choice of computer and software, which was not acceptable to my experts and me.

Some efforts were made to streamline the data collection centre in Delhi and establishing connectivity with the Foreigner’s Registration Officers in the states. We tried to streamline the information flow between the Centre and the States. But, in India, a system runs efficiently as long as the operator is willing to run it. It has gone into disuse.

A good number of Pakistani nationals visiting India through authorised routes manage to ‘melt’ down among the friendly population. For a considerable time they remain as ‘sleepers’ and they are later activated to work as resident agents. Such ‘sleeper’ and resident agents generally target areas in Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, etc. Some of these ‘sleeper cells’ are used in sensitive areas of the country for organising ‘fundamentalist’ and Islamist modules.

In addition to the ‘melting’ Pakistani nationals visiting through approved routes some trained Pakistani agents and mujaheedins are infiltrated through land border and third country routes. The latter trend gained prominence after 1992, when Pakistan’s proxy war targeted the heartland of India.

Sincere professional efforts of the PCIU to nab some of the trained Pakistani agents/mujaheedins holed up in strategic points in India were frustrated by a few key politicians. I would like to mention three such glaring instances.

Around 1994 the PCIU had identified a Pakistan trained Islamist terrorist lodged at a safe address somewhere in the constituency of a caste-baron ‘secular leader’ of Uttar Pradesh. The ISI had assigned him the task of recruiting Indian youths having Deobandi and Wahabi convictions and sending them to Pakistan /Pakistan Occupied Kashmir for training. After a prolonged surveillance and assimilation of HumInt the Pakistani national and one of Pakistan trained Indian recruits were nabbed with the help of Delhi police. They were taken to local police station for initiating procedure to transfer to Delhi police custody. The same evening a phone call was received from an officer on special duty in the PMO asking me for a report on the incident. I referred him back to my boss, as I was aware of his own undeclared linkages with Pakistani nationals.

That very night a gang of criminals headed by a brother of the caste-baron ‘secular politician’ stormed the police station and freed the detained ISI operatives, one of them a proven Pakistan national. My protestations bounced back from the home ministry and the PMO. I was advised not to press the matter, as it was not in national interest.

The other incident involved training of a group of Sunni Wahabi Muslim youths of Bihar and West Bengal in a camp jointly run by the ISI and the Islamic Chhatra Shibir of Bangladesh, somewhere near Jaipur Hat in the district of Rajshahi. The PCIU HumInt efforts managed to collect a detailed list of the Islamist trainees and contacted the local administration authorities in Bihar and West Bengal. The ‘secular’ governments of both the states declined to intervene. A senior police officer of West Bengal had bluntly advised me not to press the matter as a senior Marxist leader from North Bengal was overwhelmingly interested in the welfare of the minorities. Patna too reacted rather clumsily. They sent out advance feelers to the suspect Islamist youths and helped them to trek back to Bangladesh before a police party was graciously allowed to accompany a PCIU team to conduct search in the villages around Araria, Joki Hat, Rauta and Kanki in the district of Purnia. I was given to understand that Patna had sent a communication to Delhi alleging harassment meted out to the minorities by a vengeful team of the Intelligence Bureau. Lalu Prasad Yadav, the tarnished chief minister called for my blood. It took me two months to clear my colleagues and myself from the cobweb of politics of ‘apartheid of minorityism’.

The third incident that I promised to share with the readers had taken place in the heart of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, ruled by a caste-baron ‘secular leader’ Mulayam Singh Yadav. Intelligence generated by the PCIU and the ‘Operations Cell’ of the IB had detected some Pakistan trained foreign nationals operating from behind the safe walls of a reputed centre of Islamic studies. A raid was organised by the joint team of the Intelligence Bureau and Uttar Pradesh police. The incident had created tectonic reactions from the caste-baron politician and the PMO, which heavily depended on the support of the parliamentarians of the baron’s party for its survival. My IB colleague in Lucknow was shunted out from his post and was banished from his tenure with the organisation. Several other intelligence and police personnel were hauled over fire for violating the ‘sacred secular chastity belt’ so religiously worn by some of our political leaders.

There are examples galore to prove the point that ‘sterile secular’ stances had grievously compromised national security. India, as a nation state, must rise above petty vote bank politics and should shun using the concept of ‘secularism’ as a tool of ‘apartheid’ to insulate and isolate the Muslim community.

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It’s time I step aside and sail back into the current of events in 1988, which were twisted and turned by the storm of time rather apocalyptically. Overwhelmed by scandals, bad electoral performance and still guided by fortune hunting and inexperienced advisers Rajiv Gandhi had started ‘melting’ under pressure. The situation of drift had frustrated Rajiv Gandhi. The frustration steadily degenerated into frequent angry outbursts. It appeared the trained pilot had suddenly lost all touches with his inner guiding radar and control on the political and administrative machines. Like they said in the Gita, Rajiv’s frustration and anger degenerated into loss of self-confidence, which was a sure symptom of the onset of a devastating whirlwind that was about to sweep away the third scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Historiographers of current events have painted Rajiv Gandhi either in superlative eulogising colours or the blackest of the brush they could borrow. It is required to understand that the Congress cabal, which tried to perpetuate Nehru-Gandhi family dynasty, had imposed the charge of the vast and complicated nation on Rajiv. He was simply not the talent who could pilot India after a brief period of orientation. A country is a living organism. Probationers cannot run it. Rajiv was taught politics and administration in a few tutorial classes conducted by handpicked bureaucrats and politicians. He did not have enough time to learn the tricks of flying a grounded democracy in the rough and tough weather that India was placed after Indira’s death. He just inherited the crown of thorn. He was the antithesis of Sanjay Gandhi, who was born with an uncanny sense of dirty politics. When saddled to power Rajiv was virtually surrounded by greedy and promiscuous politicians and a band of sycophants, who had more personal blades to hone up than serving their leader and the country. The Indian national Congress (Indira Congress) in fact, harmed the party’s interest by burying the tenets of democracy.

Rattled to his bones Rajiv Gandhi was advised by some of the ostriches around him to summon back the old family loyal R. K. Dhawan from wilderness, where he was despatched by Rajiv Gandhi on the day he was sworn in as the Prime Minister. Funnily enough, I was summoned by his secretary and asked to meet the Prime Minister in the confines of his Race Course Road camp office. My face was not new to the beleaguered leader of the nation. He wanted to know if I was still in touch with Dhawan. My affirmative reply was followed by a few more questions about Dhawan’s state of mind and his possible utility in the forthcoming parliamentary polls. I shared with the Prime Minister that Dhawan could still be useful for making a last minute bid to rally the Congressmen loyal to Indira Gandhi. Given a free hand he could still deliver the results.

I emerged out of the meeting with mixed feelings. I had lost my faith in Rajiv Gandhi’s capability to run the road show. I had decided to help out the other national alternative-the Bharatiya Janata Party, the political front of the RSS, with which I had struck an emotional alliance from my troubled adolescent days.

But the crosscurrent of pity that I felt for the son of Indira Gandhi often tossed me down to the valley of vacillation. Was I doing the right thing? Should the absurd Janata experiment of 1977 be given one more chance? Was V. P. Singh the correct choice of history? Would my friends in the Sangh Parivar be able to surmount the civilisational blockades they had erected around themselves and give a stable government to the country? Or should I continue to support Rajiv Gandhi? I was a torn man. However, events had become alive by themselves. It was beyond the control of any well wisher and operative to extricate the PM from the tentacles of events, which had started tightening a noose around him.

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