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.