Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer (74 page)

The Hindu-Muslim communal carnage that followed the demolition was as intense as the partition blood bath. In fact, on January 9, 1993 I was caught in between the frenzied Hindu and Muslim mobs at Jogeshwari locality of Mumbai. Both sides tried to torch my unmarked official car. An ingenious officer, who escorted me to a safer spot and advised me not to move out of the hideout till I was escorted by an armed police force, took me out of the mess.

The fire-vomiting Shiv Sena and Hindu fanatics took full advantage of the indecisiveness of the government in Delhi and political skulduggery amongst the Congress power barons of Maharashtra. Narasimha Rao proved again that he was not made of the mettle to rule a complicated country like India. He simply did not have any clue to the complicated texture of events. Amidst the ruins of Ayodhya and the lurking flames of communal outburst he got himself busied in consolidation his position in the party by isolating Sonia Gandhi, as if that act alone was going to confer upon him political immortality. The ‘insider man’ ironically proved to be a rank ‘outsider.’

*

I would like to briefly mention about small-scale bomb blasts in Mumbai area in January 1993. These bomb blasts were later traced to the Ahl-e-Hadith (Hadis) group headed by Dr. Jalees Ansari, a medical professional. Dr Ansari’s group was involved in serial train bomb blasts on December 5/6 1993 in five prestigious trains near Kota (Rajasthan), Surat (Gujarat), Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), and Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh). Five criminal cases were registered and the CBI was entrusted with the investigation. One of the cohorts of Ansari Abre Rehmat Ansari alias Kari had received training in bomb fabrication from Pakistan based ISI operatives. It is interesting to note that the same Ahl-e-Hadith group is said to be involved in the 2003 Ghatkopar bomb blast case, near Mumbai.

The Ahl-e-Hadith (People of the Book) movement is a puritanical Islamist movement, which considers itself more reformists (in retrograde sense) than the Wahabis. One of the main centres of the Ahl-e-Hadith group is located at Darul Uloom Jamia-tus-Salehath at Malegaon, Maharashtra. The movement has tentacles all over India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. All the four major sects of Islam, the Hanafis, Salafis, Humbali and Maliki are affiliated to the purist of perfection by the Ahl-e—Hadith movement, which prescribes from time to time
fatwas
for guidance of the followers of pure Islam. It draws sustenance from the purist Islamist groups in the Arab world and Al Qaeda. The ISI of Pakistan is known to back the Ahl-e-Hadith group in pioneering a couple of Jihadist organisations in the Jammu and Kashmir State of India.

*

The videotape and about 70 still snaps that my boys had managed to capture constituted vital evidence of the act of vandalism at Ayodhya by the
shiv sainiks
and presumably the tsunami-affected devotees of Lord Rama. I had privately screened the video at my home, which was viewed by Rajendra Sharma, K.N. Gobindachariya and Uma Bharti. They agreed with me that the Shiv Sena volunteers launched the initial attack on the mosque. The tape was later handed over to the appropriate authority as a piece of valuable record.

Much later, soon after the NDA government assumed office in Delhi and the BJP top guns were summoned by the Librehan Commission to depose before it, I was twice summoned by L. K. Advani, through late Rajendra Sharma. He wanted to know the details of the videotape and demanded that I should produce it as a piece of evidence. I simply did not have any copy of the tape with me. The only copy was probably consigned to the ‘archives’ of the IB, somewhere outside Delhi. I gave a verbal account of the event and requested him to obtain the tape from the Director Intelligence Bureau.

I don’t know if the Director IB obliged Advani. The intelligence organisations are not in the habit of digging up their archives, even with a view to correcting the history of the nation. The than Director had established close rapport with certain officials of the PMO and I was told that he was advised by them to not to produce the tape that could take Advani off the hook. The Sangh Parivar obviously was not a happy family. Advani was still considered a powerful contender for the office of the Prime Minister.

There is another version of this story about which I have no comment: the Director had produced the evidence to Advani and Vajpayee and secured a gubernatorial post for himself. There is no need to wreck heads on this issue. Such things happen in the government day in and day out-
yeh sab chalta hai
.

TERROR STRIKES BACK

No one can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.

Edward R. Murrow

Soon after the Ayodhya incident I, on my own initiative, had issued circular requests to the subsidiary units of the IB to be on the lookout for possible and probable retaliatory actions by ISI sponsored militants and Islamist modules. This was different from routine security alerts issued by the IB, Home Ministry and other organs of the government. Unfortunately IB alerts were focussed on the communal front and indeterminate action of the government that had resulted in arrest of a few RSS, BJP and VHP leaders and banning of the organisations. The cascading upheaval that ensued in Bangladesh and Pakistan and spate of protests from Islamic nations were telescoped into the morbid perception of post-partition Hindu-Muslim animosity and hate campaign.

My alert was specific and was based on intelligence inputs received from a single delicate source in Pakistan. Some Bangladesh based friends managed to transmit communications giving some precise intelligence on planned infiltration into India by ISI affiliated saboteurs belonging to ICS, HUJI and Al Jihad.

But the most sensitive piece of intelligence was received from XXXX, from one of the forward talents that I had managed to locate informally without government permission. The message, camouflaged by tradecraft devices, read like this: “The ISI here and in Dubai has taken final steps to send explosives and weapons to India through the coastal landing points in Gujarat and Maharashtra. These will be received by Muslim communal elements with a view to avenge the demolition of the mosque at Ayodhya.”

In consultation with the Director, I tried to reach back to the talent. However, an intermediary advised me that ‘my friend’ had moved out of YYYY station and it would not be safe to contact him immediately. We did not have a second asset in Pakistan to cater that kind of intelligence. We were not sure what feedback had come to the R&AW.

I was not sure about the authenticity of the information and the level from which it was gleaned out by the talent. In intelligence parlance it was a piece of unassessed raw material that could not be shared with the government.

This was to be routinely filed. Nevertheless, I issued a detailed warning teleprinter circular on or around December 23, 1992 to the subsidiary units in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Punjab. The units in West Bengal and Assam were also sensitised. Though I did not have specific information I listed out some of the traditional landing sites of the smugglers in Gujarat and Maharashtra. These were shallow water minor ports or unfrequented and unguarded landing sites. The IB, until the Bombay serial bomb blasts devastated the country, was blissfully ignorant about threats from the shallow water landing spots and Pakistan’s capability to hit India from that sector. These areas of coverage were left to the imagination of the state police and Central Excise and Customs Department.

I listed out over a dozen suspected landing sites in Gujarat from Jakhau in Bhuj to Jam Salaya in Kathiawar to Valsad on Gujarat-Maharashtra border. In Maharashtra emphasis was given on the landing sites in and around Bombay, Thane, Diva, Alibag, Bhalgaon, Dande, Ratnagiri and Jaitpur.

The warning circular also requested the subsidiary units to bring the contents to the notice of the state administrations and request them to take appropriate preventive measures. I did not issue a warning to the government of India as my seniors thought that I was overreacting on the basis of a single piece of information that could not be corroborated by any other internal and external asset. The Director simply scrawled his signature on the office copy and it was filed. Procedurally their decision was correct. But if the stupid piece of information were evaluated in the backdrop of happenings inside the country and abroad they would have probably made different deductions.

As I said earlier the Intelligence Bureau had gathered the habit of combating the ISI in isolated test tubes-Punjab, Kashmir, North East and the communal virus. Each time they stirred up the concoction they came out with different results. It was a difficult task to convince my senior and junior colleagues to study the ISI as a whole, a single piece of geopolitical carcinoma that had become invasive.

On or around January 13, 1993 I received another communication from the same Pakistan based friend to meet him personally at a point due north of Bhuj, just a couple of kilometres inside the Rann of Kutch. The crucial meeting took place at the wrong side of midnight and the friend briefed me in details about the consignments of explosives and weapons being shipped to India in mechanised dhows from the general area of Goth Khirsar and Kati Bandar, both in lower south-east Sind. He did not have precise idea about the handlers of the explosives and weapons but was of the general view that some fishing magnets were tapped by the ISI for ferrying the materials to the Indian coast. He was also not specific about the likely landing point in India. He simply did not have access to that information, but was sure that the ISI had tapped some Gulf based Indian criminal gang to carry out the operation.

On my return to Delhi another circular alert was issued emphasising the immediate nature of the threat and likely involvement of Muslim criminal/communal gangs in Bombay and Ahmedabad, Jamnagar and Jodia Bandar in Gujarat. This time too the government was not informed. I could not do that without clearance of the boss and the rules of the game said that only assessed and processed information should be catered to the consumer.

Most subsidiary units responded in routine manner and dithered in arranging coverage of the Muslim gangsters in their respective areas. They simply did not have access to these species of predators. These matters were vaguely left to the undefined jurisdiction of the Customs and Excise department and the state police. They too did not display any interest in the matter, though they were briefed. Neither the central government agencies nor the state government had in position any apparatus along the vast coastal area to check incursion by the ISI and other inimical forces around the time the deadly consignments were despatched to India. Some skeletal patchwork was done along the vulnerable points in Tamil Nadu after the LTTE bombers assassinated Rajiv Gandhi. That too was eyewash.

The Coast Guard in its present form was inaugurated on August 18, 1978 to protect the territorial waters of the nation and prevent smuggling and poaching activities. It, however, paid more attention to the blue waters. It did not maintain regular vigil on the shallow waters and the minor ports and unspecified shallow landing sites. It was not designed to carry out the sieve work to filter the flourishing dhow traffic between India, Pakistan and the Gulf destinations.

This ambiguity in planning the safety of the vast coastlines of India was fully exploited by the ISI to send shipments of explosives and weapons to Maharashtra and Gujarat landing sites in collaboration with the cartel of Dawood Ibrahim that operated in Bombay, Karachi and Dubai. It pains me to add that even today hardly any security and intelligence attention focussed on the minor and unregulated landing sites in Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat coastal areas.

*

The front paws of Dawood Ibrahim and the ISI collaborators hit Bombay on March 12, 1993, in which 257 persons were killed and 713 were injured. India was put on another fire-walking test and it was proved beyond doubt that the ISI and the Islamist Jihadists were capable of hitting India anywhere and anytime. The Islamists had already proved this point by attacking the WTO in USA and expanding their activities to theatres like the Balkan countries, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Xinjiang and the Philippines etc.

However, it did not dawn on the Indian intelligence community that by 1992 the ISI and the al Qaeda had become full partners in International Islamist terrorism and they had attained the capability of retaliating against the Hindu chauvinists in India. The point was lost on the Sangh Parivar too, who had failed to recognise that the events at Ayodhya and Bombay had transformed the low-key communal outbursts to global Islamist jihad. The vulnerable sections of Indian Muslims were systematically targeted with a view to expanding the orbit of the proxy war from the bordering states and ethnic broiling points to the heartland of the country.

After the Bombay serial bomb blasts an outcry was raised about intelligence blackout. An unpardonable amnesia had gripped the Intelligence Bureau. However, I fished out the old reports and communications and apprised the Director about the existence of some forewarning, which were shared with the key state governments. I believe these pieces of isolated and ‘unauthorised’ actions taken by me had saved the skin of the teeth of the agency.

No one was to be blamed. The IB had simply not matured to combat the ISI and other jihadist forces in an organised manner. There was no project paper in position; there was no intelligence infrastructure and the IB officers were not trained and motivated to take on the ISI and its affiliates as a part of the Establishment of Pakistan and as an ally of the international jihadist forces like the al Qaeda. I understand my friends in the agency have now devised ways and means to combat these forces in more organised manner.

As far as the Research and Analysis wing is concerned I have very little to comment. But as a remote consumer in the IB I can assert with confidence that we did not receive any intelligence input from the sister organisation either directly or through other organs of the government. Only a national level enquiry can ascertain the truth. But who cares for truth in a nation where the national slogan is
Satyameva Jayate
(only truth shall be victorious)? Slogans are tools of mass hypnosis. These are not grains of truth!

*

After a few days of the serial blasts I had a discussion with the Director and asked if I could help in any way in unearthing the criminal conspiracy that had resulted in the stunning blow imparted by the ISI. On my demand that I should be shown the current inputs from Bombay and Ahmedabad I was informed that the reports he had were based on uninformed guesswork and intelligent collage of post-incident data. These were statistics, not hard intelligence. The HumInt and TechInt inputs produced very little lead to give an insight into the intricate connectivity between the ISI and the mafia groups of Bombay. No cell of the ISI and Pakistan based Jihadist organisations were identified either by the IB or the State police intelligence. It was, I argued, a ‘commissioned transaction’ of the ISI. The agency must have had hired some Muslim criminals to carry out the sinister plan. The argument was convincing but nothing tangible had yet emerged except some tenuous linkages with the Tiger Memon family.

I did not make any promise to the Director, but I decided to explore the uncertain waters. After initial interaction with the top brass of the IB’s subsidiary unit and the state police I decided to walk past some unconventional tunnel.

The first stop was the Sofia College street residence of Haji Mastan, one time dreaded smuggler. My line to the notorious smuggler was opened up about a year ago through a Chennai based collaborator of the don. He had flourishing connection with the Bombay underworld, Tamil Muslim leather processing barons of Gujarat and certain questionable Tamil personalities in Sri Lanka. For certain security reasons I would like to protect his identity. The friend flew into Bombay and arranged my meetings with Haji Mastan. Over a few sessions Haji opened up and indicated that the major landing site used by the ISI was located in Uran/Alibag area. After repeated pestering he referred me to a person at Behrampada, a Muslim dominated slum near Bandra railway station.

For a Hindu getting in and out of the Behrampada slum was a real life nightmare. The Hindus specially avoided certain segments of the slum after the January riots and the serial bomb blasts. The person assigned by Haji Mastan (name suppressed) arranged my meeting with the concerned person, who was a known associate of Dawood Ibrahim. Though a Muslim he was married to a Hindu woman, Koli (fishing community) by caste, and was ready to speak for a fee. He spoke after three meetings and disclosed the clear contour of the operation carried out by the ISI and his Bombay based associates, who had decided to collaborate with the ISI with a view to punishing the Hindus for demolition of the Ayodhya mosque and subsequent communal holocaust. It was a good beginning.

This underworld associate of Dawood was the first one to point fingers at the Tiger Memon family, the possible landing site (later confirmed) at Shekadi, in Raigad district. He had also indicated that some of the explosives were dumped at Thane creek, to be fished out later and used against selected targets.

This was some breakthrough. I kept the Director informed without going through the official channel of the Bombay unit of the IB. I was, in fact, freelancing in Bombay at my own risk, as a journalist from reputed English daily. I had, in my possession at least three faked identity cards of the leading papers, and one identity card of a TV channel. Obviously our boys in the technical wing of the IB had manufactured these.

The second person I contacted was Dhirubhai Ambani, the billionaire industrialist. I had known him for a while through a Delhi based common friend. Ambani was amazed to see a comparatively junior officer approaching him on mundane matters like opening up the roadblock to my meeting with Bal Thackrey, the Shiv Sena supremo, Keshu Bhai Patel, a BJP leader from Gujarat and Chhabil Das Mehta, than Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Dhirubhai was acclimatised to the officials in Delhi in other contexts; the contexts of money, business and transactions. To my amazement the much adored and vilified tycoon was more than cooperative. I found him to be highly patriotic and concerned about the stability of the western region of the country where most of his major ventures were located.