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Cancerous growth

Cancerous growth

Author: Ajay Uprety
Publication: The Week
Date: September 24, 2000

The bomb that went off in a house in a busy Agra locality killing three youths on August 9 was only a portend of things to come. Five days later yet another bomb ripped through the Sabarmati Express train at Rojagaon near Faizabad, killing 10 and injuring several others. Three more blasts followed, two in Kanpur and one in Lucknow, but fortunately there were no casualties.

The message was loud and clear: the terrorists wanted to make this year's Independence Day one of the bloodiest ever. That they failed in their efforts is another matter. The authorities have since established the role of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence in the blasts, but the incidents proved that they were in the dark of the deep-rooted ISI activities in Uttar Pradesh. More shocking was the active role some retired and serving army personnel played in the ISI operations.

Taj Mohammed Sheikh alias Teja, a court-martialled major of the Central Command who lives in Lucknow Cantonment, and Sant Ram Rai, a retired junior commissioned officer of the same command from Manasnagar, had been working for the ISI for the last few years. They had been passing on 'top secret' documents pertaining to vital defence installations, ordnance factories and troop movements to ISI agents Naushad Ahmed and Mohammed Shakir, both from Nepal. Teja and Rai were reportedly paid $500 for the documents.

Teja was lured by the ISI soon after he was court-martialled in 1995 for accepting bribes during a recruitment drive. ISI agents took him to Nepal, where he was introduced to an ISI official working in the Pakistan High Commission. He was asked to draw on his contacts in the Central Command and smuggle out defence documents. Rai, who was also trained in Nepal, was entrusted with the task of recruiting youths to collect information about senior IAS and defence officials, who would fall in line with the ISI plans. Teja and Rai were running a private security agency, Navyug Suraksha Guard, in Lucknow, which, in effect, worked as a front.

Special Task Force sleuths arrested both of them in Lucknow on September 5. Among other things the STF recovered from them bills issued by hotels in Kathmandu, 12 fake passports, arms and ammunition, gradation list of IAS officials of UP cadre and blank letterheads of the Rashtravadi Congress Party and the BSP.

According to Senior Superintendent of Police Arun Kumar, a JCO of Central Command, R.D. Tripathi, also had been leaking defence secrets to the ISI for the last one year. Like Tripathi, retired havildar Ramakrishnan Nair, who hails from Kannur in Kerala, had ISI links. Nair, who retired last year, had made several trips to Nepal while still in service. Both of them were arrested on September 7.

The ISI had penetrated the inner circles of the army even before the Kargil war. Mohammed Zafar of the Army Signal Corps, who was posted in Baramulla, was caught in June 1999 from Gammu ka Hata in Kanpur while passing information about Central Command troop movements. After he was declared a deserter by the army Zafar was trained by the ISI in Pakistan and pushed back to India.

The ISI has even made inroads into the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. According to Lucknow-based senior master technician Naimul-haq-Siddiqi, Teja and Rai took him to Kathmandu in 1998 under the pretext of holidaying. He was put up in the five-star Imperial Hotel where he met ISI agents who asked him to smuggle out maps of fighter aircraft components manufactured in Lucknow. He was promised Rs 2 lakh as reward. A scared Siddiqi initially said yes but backed out once he was back in Lucknow.

The ISI, say intelligence sources, used to pay Teja Rs 15,000 a month apart from his travelling allowance. Extra money was paid whenever the task was deemed difficult. Lesser agents like Rai were getting Rs 10,000 a month.

Meanwhile, Central Command officials are tightlipped about ISI's access to the secret documents in their headquarters in Lucknow.
 


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