Operation ‘Fox-Hunt’ (7 page)

Asim displayed the attitude of a political prisoner, demanding loudly that he be immediately released. His brother was an ‘important’ man in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a local political outfit, and claimed that he would ruin the careers of those holding him. Even when the unit returned to the camp, Asim was still spouting threats. On reaching the camp, Asim was handed over to the civil police for documentation while Vijay and Ankush headed for lunch.

Post lunch, they briefed their Commanding Officer (CO) about the operation and headed to the cell to interrogate Asim. They were intercepted by a police officer who confirmed Asim’s
status as a member of Hurriyat. The report also mentioned that he was suspected of using hawala to bankroll stone-pelters in the valley a few summers back.

“A real troublemaker! What is he doing here?” Ankush wondered aloud.

Asim was uncharacteristically quiet, sipping a small glass of tea; his expression changed as soon as he saw Vijay. He scowled.

“What are you doing here, Asim? Why are you here? Long way from Trigam for you.”

“Why should I answer you? This is our country, not yours; I should ask you the question. What are you doing here?” spat Asim.

Vijay didn’t have time for this. He walked across the room and slapped Asim repeatedly. “You better understand that this is not a political rally, neither are we reporters who will listen and debate your nonsense? Now you start answering my questions, and keep your speeches for when you become the chief minister, okay? Understand, or should I explain again?” Asim nodded visibly shaken.

“I came to meet my old uncle who is not well.”

“When did you come from Trigam?”

“Day before morning. Took a bus and a cousin picked me up from the highway on his motorcycle.”

“Where were you last night?”

“I had dinner at seven and went to sleep in my house.”

“Are you sure? Where did you sleep?”

“On the bed, sir, where else?” Asim allowed himself a smirk.

“Really? We went to your house; the bed was not slept in.”

The smirk vanished from Asim’s face. Vijay gestured to the policeman outside, who brought in a gunny sack and a polythene bag.

“Are these clothes yours? I said, are these clothes yours, Asim?” Vijay repeated.

“No … yes they are….”

“Where were you yesterday?” The salwar had gashes and was soiled at the ankles as if somebody had been in the mud wearing them. “You went into the forest at night, didn’t you?” Vijay pulled out the shoes from the gunny sack and pointed the sole at Asim.

There was a stream on the far side of the village bordering the woods. It was far enough from the village that it could not be considered a stroll as per the policeman who had briefed Vijay on the topography of the area. “Stream bed mud. So you crossed over into the forest. Who were you meeting there? We know that someone from the other side passed through the area. Look Asim, whoever you are protecting will run into us today or tomorrow and eventually get killed. You know how it is nowadays, don’t you?” Vijay said.

It was true, a militant was lucky to survive three months in the valley without being tracked down and terminated. The army units were based in the area for two to three years with most senior officers, having service experience of more than five years in the valley. They knew the topography and the mindset of the local populace. Every trooper inducted into the valley underwent proper acclimatisation and training sessions. Units like the RR had archival institutional experience and contacts in the local population. The militants were usually from Pakistani states of Punjab or from poorer regions of the POK. Some were from as far as Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Afghanistan. Without local guides, they were cannon fodder. Most troops had years of training under their belt, while the militants hardly had few weeks, if any, of training. The odds were heavily stacked against an insurgent crossing over. The fact
that most local militant organisations espousing the ‘cause’ had either gone political or had been eliminated were proof of the inability of the insurgency to shake the foundations of Indian control in the state.

Vijay’s voice suddenly turned icy cold. “But you … I will personally put a bullet in your head if you don’t start talking; tell me who they were and where they were heading … And you walk out from here unharmed or you go home in a bag.” Asim seemed to get the general idea. Vijay was not in a mood to relent; it was almost five in the evening. If the terrorists had rested in the day they would start moving in a few hours. Time was scarce.

Finally Asim relented, “LET men. My job was to give them some Indian money and some ready-made food. They were 20 men, all armed; more than half of them were from the local LET units. They have a camp in the mountains … resting now … will move once darkness falls.” He suddenly seemed to withdraw; all the blood had drained from his face. He realised that he had just betrayed a cause he had sworn to protect all his life. Warm bile rose from his stomach into his throat.

“
Where
in the fucking mountains, Asim?” Vijay asked menacingly and fingered his 9mm. A policeman on the side smacked Asim’s arm with a cane and that got his immediate attention. “
Where
Asim?”

Asim finally answered hoarsely, “Up, up the Sheraz hills; they have a camp near the rocky overhang. I know that, they always do that, can’t be seen from the air,” he gestured for water.

Vijay had one final question. He picked up the bottled water, “Whose men are they, the locals?”

“Wasim Khan! Wasim Khan…” he spluttered as he reached for the bottle of water Vijay held.

“It’s 30 minutes away from the road head near the Baramulla border. If we leave now, we should make contact by 2130 hours.
QRT is ready,” exclaimed Ankush to his CO as Vijay completed his update.

“Agree, you take a team and head from the west, Delta Company has a patrol out, we will redirect them towards west to cut off escape towards LOC. I will update the Kilo force HQ about the operation,” he said referring to the RR force headquarters which was responsible for Kupwara area.

Kupwara-Baramulla district border: 2200 hours

All Indian infantry units in operational area maintain a quick reaction force on a 24 hours standby. The RR units also maintained this tradition. Usually a platoon level force with fully armed and ready men, it could swing into action in less than an hour. It usually had men with light arms like AK-47s or the newer Tavor rifles, a machine gun and a mortar section besides the popular Carl Gustav rocket launcher. It is usually called a ‘Ghatak’ or ‘Attack’ platoon. This was the force that was mobilised for raiding the camp as per the intelligence yielded from Asim. As the Ghatak platoon closed in, the scouts reported that the militants seemed to be preparing to abandon camp. Ankush waited for the Delta Company to come into position while his platoon slowly closed in on the camp. At the stroke of the hour, the sky lit up with flares as the jawans (a term popularly used for soldiers in India and Pakistan) roared into attack with the Maratha war cry reverberating through the mountainside, “Bol Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj Ki Jai!”(Victory to King Shivaji!). The militants tried to hold defensive positions. The heavy machine gun added a steady din as tracer bullets marked out the militant positions. The militants fired back with the rocket-propelled grenades to break-off the attack. The night-shattering chatter of AK-47 rifles and Tavors along with the ‘whoosh’ and explosive thumps of the RPGs and the Carl Gustavs filled the
air as both sides tried to grab an early advantage and deny the opposition a foothold.

Ankush was in no hurry. After his team had grabbed a few key positions overlooking the ridge, he cautioned his men against doing anything reckless. Time was on their side. Delta Company was slowly closing in from the west, tightening the noose. The northern side was an 80-feet drop into a gorge. The only open side was on the east, deeper into the Indian territory and more friendly forces; he had just been informed on the radio that an SOG unit of Jammu & Kashmir police was closing in from that direction.

Wasim Khan, the senior-most militant and the local commander of the LET realised the same thing and deduced that they had little time before they were boxed in from all directions. He decided to fight a rearguard action so that the five ‘guests’ could escape. He turned to the leader of the five men and explained the situation. Major Shezad Khan agreed.

“It’s true, we must leave you to fight the infidels, you and your men will be called gaznis if you win and martyrs if you die. Good luck, Allah Haifz.”

Along with his team and three more local militants acting as bodyguards, Shezad Khan turned to the cover of the night. As eight men melted into the darkness, Wasim Khan and his men aggressively fired towards the troops to hold them back and reduce chances of them giving chase to the other party. Realising that the tempo of firing from the militants had suddenly increased, Ankush sensed something was up.

While his troops took up position and started retaliating with rockets and heavy machine-gun fire to smother the constant and heavy fire coming their way, Ankush hiked up a kilometre and took a section around the militants’ flanks in order to close any escape route from the east. It was in the darkness of the jungle
that both groups, Shezad’s and Ankush’s, ran into each other. They were too close and all mixed up for fire arms to be used in the darkness. A brutal hand to hand ensued.

Ankush found himself crashing the butt of his AK-47 into a militant. As he moved away from his opponent, he saw one of his men being assaulted by a militant. Ankush pulled the militant away and tried to wrestle him to ground. Suddenly the sky lit up with more flares. Ankush heard the words, “Oh shit!” from his opponent as he threw another punch at Ankush. In the light of the flare, Ankush saw the face of his opponent for a full second; he realised that the man didn’t have a beard, he was almost clean shaven. At that moment, as another flare exploded in the night sky, Ankush saw his opponent’s face again. Suddenly he felt a searing pain in his sides as someone pushed a knife into his lower torso.

With his opponent down, Shezad turned around and helped two more of his men shake off the attacking force. Fighting a rearguard battle, they swiftly melted into the surrounding jungles with their guides as the Indian soldiers pulled back to rescue their young leader. As gunfire continued from Wasim’s position, Shezad and his men were led away by the guides to safety.

As the SOG closed in from the east and Delta Company from the west, Wasim Khan’s men fell one by one. The Indian troops began to pour in concentrated fire and the unequal battle was over in less than two hours. 27 RR had six wounded, including Ankush while there were about ten dead militants and two wounded. Eight had melted into the night. In the military hospital, Ankush was told that he would be fine. It was a non-threatening knife wound and the operation had been successful.

As the doctor said, “Serious but not fatal, you are lucky. I think you will be with us for a few days and then can take a long
leave and head home for a comforting recovery.”

Vijay came to meet him at the military hospital. It was not a social visit. It was an intelligence debriefing. “It was strange. He swore in English and had a very military bearing with a clean-shaven face. The close-quarter combat style, I don’t know why, but everything pointed to a military officer in mufti.” Vijay noted the points down and wondered.

Tomorrow he would fly down to Srinagar and discuss it with his superior at the Corps HQ.

4

National Investigation Agency (NIA) HQ, New Delhi, India 17th November: 1000 hours

D
ubey, an analyst with the NIA, went through reports from different intelligence agencies every day. He sent a brief of the analysis which eventually ended up on the Prime Minister’s desk.

India, being a federal structured government, has a host of security agencies at both the state and national level. The states have their own Criminal Investigation Division (CID) as a part of the state police, which comes under political control through respective state home ministries.

The national government has three security agencies: The Research and Analysis Wing of the cabinet secretariat or RAW as it is known in the media, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the National Investigation Agency or the NIA. Besides this each of the armed forces has its own intelligence-gathering network namely the Military, Air Force and Naval intelligence. The multiplicity of the agencies, their internal rivalry and dynamics along with lack of coordination with state forces have led to cases of intelligence failures in the past decades.

RAW is responsible for international espionage and counter intelligence. It comes under the Prime Minister’s office and is
led by an additional secretary in the cabinet secretariat. RAW has an air-arm called the Aviation Research Centre (ARC) for gathering and analysing intelligence. This arm also provides air assets for the RAW. Usually all RAW officers are ex-Indian police services officers or military personnel transferred to RAW. Direct entry is through the RAW Allied Service (RAS). RAW is primarily responsible for aggressive intelligence-gathering. Some of its latest successes have included forced rendition of Lashkar militant Tariq Mehmood, Abdul Karim Tundaand Sheikh Abdul Khwaja, one of the handlers of the 26/11 attacks. During the 1999 Kargil conflict, RAW had one face saving moment. A recording between General Musharraf and his commanders was intercepted and shared as proof of Pakistan’s direct involvement in the conflict.