Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (58 page)

In the meantime, my enlarged operational commitments in the PCIU had broadened the orbit of activities. I had started establishing the nucleus of PCIU cells in the field formations almost all over the country. I would like to revert to that a little later. My priority attention was focussed on the border tracts between Rajasthan, Gujarat with Pakistan. These prime infiltration routes were fabulously exploited by Pakistan to infiltrate trained and armed Sikh terrorists. The ISI and Field Intelligence Units of the Pak DMI located at Tejeke, Chhatteke, Nallianwala, Bahawalnagar, Bala Arian, Faqirabad, Harunabad and Fort Abbas on Punjab and Rajasthan borders had started playing havoc with our national security. These posts acted as forward launching pads for the Sikh terrorists, trained Islamist saboteurs and intelligence agents. Our physical defence was appallingly poor and intelligence presence was negligible. I made several forays to Jaipur and impressed upon the state police and intelligence machineries the need for strengthening border intelligence and policing. The Union Home Ministry also pitched in. I undertook prolonged visit to the remote border intelligence posts, which were under-resourced and poorly manned. These visits gave me vast opportunities to prime new intelligence targets, launch shallow penetration trans-border agents and to penetrate some of the Pakistani posts.

One such visit took me to the border belt of Hindu Mal Kot to Anupgarh, with stops at Sri Karanpur and Raisinghpur. On February 12, 1989, I was at Raisinghpur border intelligence post on a mission to meet a transborder agent from the ISI post at Harunabad. He had earlier reported on massing of about 40 Sikh terrorists armed to the teeth at Harunabad by an ISI handler known as ‘Choudhry’. He arrived late in the night and was debriefed immediately and pushed back early in the morning.

As I was preparing to start onward journey to Anupgarh an important telephone call from Delhi checkmated my move. The antique First World War field telephone required cranking before connectivity could be achieved. Delhi was raised after gruelling effort of about 15 minutes and I was directed by my immediate boss to return to Delhi forthwith and assured that everything at my home front was okay. I was required on an urgent operational work. The order was emphatic and I turned the wheels towards Delhi, a good 12 hours journey through existing roads, dried riverbeds and sandy desert tracts.

I reported back to the Chief boss at about 22 hrs and was told to meet him in the morning for an urgent briefing. The morning briefing lasted for about five minutes. I was directed to contact and persuade Rajendra Kumar Dhawan to rejoin the personal staff of Rajiv Gandhi.

Why me? The answer was again emphatic. In February 1989, Dhawan lived like a lonely mendicant. He had shaven his hair off, taken to sincere worshipping and casual lonely stroll in the backyards of the Golf Links. Political activists shunned him; the business and industry tycoons avoided him like a plague and the serving bureaucrats sneered at him as a pariah. I was one of the few stupid people who visited him regularly, defying squinted caution from the bosses and friends.

My late evening visit surprised Dhawan. I broke the news to him with trepidation. He was an injured person. Justice Thakkar had hanged the stigma of responsibility for the assassination of Indira Gandhi on his neck, at the instance of Rajiv’s corporate cronies.

Dhawan’s initial response was an emphatic no. I expected it. But I succeeded in convincing him that return to Rajiv Gandhi’s office would give him an opportunity to get rid of the Thakkar sticker from his chest. He should agree to join Rajiv on condition that the PM agreed to exonerate him on the floor of the parliament and on files of the concerned ministries. Why should he die with the stigma of being a betrayer? Probably he did not require the money and the status, but he sure would like to clear his name! Dhawan finally yielded after I agreed to draft a note to the PM outlining the necessity of clearing Dhawan’s name of the Thakkar stigma before he could be appointed as an official aide to the PM with the rank and privileges of an additional secretary to the government of India. I have no doubt that Dhawan had also consulted other experts and friends.

Rajiv Gandhi received Dhawan at his camp office and after a couple of days he was restored to the office of the PM, but with a reduced status. Dhawan was no more able to exercise the same power and influence as he did in the halcyon days of Indira Gandhi.

As I expected the hidden hunters armed with scissors and machetes started their operations soon after Dhawan took his shaky seat. Satish Sharma, M. L. Fotedar and Mani Shankar Iyer, etc, headed the cheer group. They did not approve of the ‘stenographer’s’ reappearance on their pitch that had witnessed a cultural quantum jump. The corporate culture was craftily combined with the cultures of the big industrial houses and the core properties of the criminal world. By the time Dhawan returned to the PMO Rajiv had lost control both of the auto and manual piloting system of the state machinery. The only perverted noise that was prominently heard was ‘
gali gali mein shor hai, Rajiv Gandhi chor hai
’.

The likely outcome of November 1989 parliamentary polls were accurately predicted by the MARG, a marketing and research group crediting only 195 seats to Indira Congress. The Intelligence Bureau conclusions did not vastly differ from the MARG figures. But certain elements in the core formation of the IB were not yet ready to look into the mirror. Some of them, including the virtual brain trust of the Director IB, inflated the figures and predicted 273 seats to the kitty of Rajiv’s party. Such figure fudging was not uncommon, especially when overexposure to the seat of power often blurred the objectivity of the operators and analysts. The ostriches around Rajiv, like Vasant Sathe, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Vishwajit Prithwijit Singh etc, ganged up with some media ostriches and tried vainly to keep up Rajiv’s sagging moral.

I had made it abundantly clear to Dhawan soon after he rejoined the PMO that I would not be able to help him out formally in any manner in election matters. Why? He asked me. I owed a reply to my friend, which was extremely blunt. I had lost faith in Rajiv Gandhi’s capability and I was disillusioned by his blind faith on a group of self-seeking friends. I had seen the raw hides below the skin of Rajiv loyalists like Satish Sharma during certain security and intelligence operations in Punjab. He was more interested in managing money than the affairs of his friend. I did not want to be sneered at by the so-called aristocrat and unprofessional ‘advisors’ of Rajiv. Dhawan was not happy to hear me. But I promised to share with him my personal estimate of the likely election results and other matters that were important to his own survival amongst the pack of wolves in the PMO/PMH. I hoped he understood me. I was not adept in doing a job on which I had no control. Neither had I liked any other General to fight my war.

I hadn’t developed faith in V. P. Singh either. But I did not see any harm to help the BJP out as a probable alternative. Dhawan did not agree with me. But we agreed to remain friends and help him out at personal level. I kept up my word and later helped Dhawan (not Rajiv) with an informal election study. The result was astonishingly shocking. Rajiv was not likely to pass the 190 mark. Dhawan too, like most other aides of Rajiv Gandhi, hoped against hope and expected that they could turn the tables on V. P. Singh’s National Front and its Marxist and BJP allies.

The Intelligence Bureau was tasked to target the NF allies of V. P. Singh, especially Chandrashekhar, Ram Krishna Hegde, Coudhury Devi Lal and others. Rajiv Gandhi expected that these leaders could be exploited like his younger brother once exploited Jagjiwan Ram, Charan Singh and Rajnarain, etc. Some aides of Rajiv Gandhi too were in touch with Hegde and Viren Shah, both friends of Maneka Gandhi and her maternal family. But these leaders were unable to swim against the anti-Rajiv Gandhi torrent and thought it better to swim alongside V. P. Singh until such time they could play the role Charan Singh played to Morarji Desai.

The IB Director was a good friend of Rajiv Gandhi but like his Prime Minister, reliable assistants did not surround him. A number of senior and middle level IB officers were in discreet touch with the National Front leaders. Some of the ‘
thakur
’ (warrior class) leaders of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had virtually sided with V. P. Singh, another ‘thakur’ by caste. A fanatic ‘thakur’ lobbyist from Uttar Pradesh was in constant touch with Bhurelal and Vinod Pandey, two senior bureaucrats enjoying confidence of the rebel leader. He acted as a conduit to some of the members of the fourth estate who assiduously worked for V. P. Singh.

But the most important contact of the NF leaders, especially Arif Mohammad Khan, Mufti Mohammad and anti-Rajiv leaders like Vidya Charan Shukla in the IB was Mr. Saxena. He presided over the most sensitive desk in the IB that directly reported to the DIB and catered to the needs of the PMO. His Kashmir background had helped in establishing firm relationship with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. He discreetly shared with them all strategic information from the virtual repository of top-level political intelligence treasure of the organisation. His endeavours were rewarded by the home minister of V. P. Singh, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed by awarding him the post of Director General of Police of Jammu and Kashmir.

There is no doubt, I continued, amidst my preoccupation with the PCIU and Punjab affairs, to remain in touch with my BJP and RSS friends. I was fully aware that even in my private capacity I should not dabble in politics. I had always lived on the edges. I have always succumbed to one of the fighting squirrels inside me. That’s me. And I thought that it was my duty to the nation to help bringing about a regime change for the better. I had fullest regards for the son of Indira Gandhi, but I knew he was not yet ripe for the leadership of a complex country like India was. In me, I had discovered another Quixote, who thought he was capable of delivering some good results.

K.N.Gobindachariya, on most days accompanied and driven by Uma Bharati visited us. We shared food and exchanged information. We worked on a comprehensive list of constituencies where the BJP lagged behind Indira Congress and the NF candidates. Another broadsheet was worked out on the caste and class equations in the vital constituencies in the Hindi belt, Rajasthan and Gujarat and a few selected constituencies in the southern peninsula. We exchanged the visible and anticipated Indira Congress strategy all over the country, especially in its strongholds in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. I did so without consulting IB records and without having any access to Dhawan on such matters. My own resource poll was good enough.

S. Gurumurthy, Ved Prakash Goyal, Rajinder Sharma, Deodas Apte, and Piyush Goyal supplemented frequent visits by Gobindachariya and Uma. Piyush was accepted at our home as the fifth member, for whom a bed and a dinner plate were laid out almost daily. Piyush was not an active member of the RSS and BJP way back in 1989. But his commitment was no less than of the most committed member of the Sangh Parivar. I still cherish the friendship of Piyush and his charming wife Seema, who is an oasis of love and affection.

I had virtually grown up with Gobindachariya, ideologically speaking. He seemed to me the most articulate and versatile of the whole lot. He was totally committed to the cause of buoying up the political front of the RSS to power. His optimism, sharp intellect and capability to work like a sledge dog were shadowed by not too invisible a pathos. A woman is better radar to detect the smoky traces of love in a person. Sunanda drew my attention to the fact that Gobind and Uma were in love. Our observations did not miss the tender looks in their eyes and smiles and their demeanour as a man and woman, which was distinct from their ideological and political relationship.

More than once Uma confided in my late wife about her intention to marry Gobind after taking clearance from the RSS top brass and after getting ceremonially relieved from her vow as a
sanyasin
(holy person who is supposed to maintain celibacy). We fervently hoped for that day to come soon and two sincere souls to unite in holy marital bond.

That was not to happen in near future. Gobindachariya was not permitted to marry-being a
pracharak
. He was assigned a mission by the RSS. He was supposed to work for the political ascendance of the BJP and Uma Bharati was cut out both for political and a special role: spreading virulent Hindutwa and advocating the cause of Rama temple in Ayodhya. My wife and I were immensely pained by the subsequent developments, when ideological and political demands prevailed upon the emotional demands of the fine couple. Gobind felt distressed, often in the thick of political developments. Uma, like most women, felt utterly lost. My wife and I were deputed twice by Gobind to counsel her. But her pining was deeper than our shallow words. We appreciated the state of desperation when her emotional banks were breached by an unfortunate incident. Well into 2004, I have developed a doubt that political compulsions may not allow Gobind and Uma to tie the holy knot.

A little before the November 1989 polls Gobindachariya and Gurumurthy insisted that I should meet Lal Krishna Advani, the BJP president. We met twice at the latter’s Pandara Park residence, just across the road from our Bapa Nagar government housing colony. I was impressed by the white haired and moustached leader and the sharpness exhibited by him. He was too ahead of most other Sangh Parivar leaders I happened to meet, except Gobind and I deduced that he would one day lead a government solely dominated by the Hindutwa forces. His blueprint was not stridently ‘non-secular’. But he gave me to understand that his views on secularism were an open state policy and not as a policy of social and political apartheid. It coincided with my views.