When Indian spies trained separatists to hijack an Indian aircraft

The hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft by two Kashmiris in 1971 was an event the Pakistani government would have loved to prevent. But the Indians would not let them.

The strange anecdote dates back to the time before the Bangladesh war. The liberation of the then East Pakistan was already high on the agenda of the Indian establishment. The Pakistan government was also aware of its neighbour's game plan. The army was flying backups to the eastern enclave of the country to deal with a possible offensive from India.

The Indian Army, however, was not ready yet. The government wanted to scuttle Pakistan's military mobilisation while the army prepared for the decisive operation. It had to prevent Pakistani carriers from reinforcing the eastern front by flying over India.

There was a small problem. India could not deny the neighbouring country's flights in its airspace unless there was s formal declaration of war. To do so would be to violate international conventions. The army was not yet ready to go to a full-fledged war.

Prime minister Indira Gandhi knew she had to explore unconventional methods. She put RAW chief R N Kao. The spymaster came up with an outrageous idea: accuse Pakistan of hijacking an Indian aircraft! That would give India the perfect excuse to ban overflights.

The RAW got in touch with Hashim Qureshi, a separatist who had been working as a double agent in the Pak-Occupied Kashmir. Qureshi had already been approached by the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, to prepare a blueprint to hijack an aircraft flown by the prime minister's pilot-son, Rajiv Gandhi. The RAW wanted him to say yes to the ISI.

Qureshi then crossed over to the Indian Kashmir along with his cousin Ashraf Qureshi. Both of them were flown to Bengaluru to be trained by RAW spies.

The cousins boarded a Srinagar-Jammu Indian Airlines flight in January 1971. Armed with a toy gun and a few grenades, they hijacked the aircraft to Lahore across the border.

They threatened to finish off all the passengers and destroy the aircraft unless the Indian government released about 30 separatists from jail. India responded that Pakistan had a responsibility to ensure the safety of the aircraft and the passengers. Qureshi carried out of his briefing by insisting to speak with external affairs minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. That interview gave India the 'proof' of the hijackers' links to the Pakistani establishment.

Pakistan was in a bind. The authorities offered to help. The passengers were evacuated from the aircraft and sent to India by road but the hijackers used the opportunity to blast the aircraft with the grenades they were carrying.

Pakistan arrested the Qureshis but the Indian government pinned the blame on Pakistan and prohibited the overflights of Pakistani aircraft. Pakistani army had no other way to fly around the peninsula over Sri Lanka to reach the eastern province.

That logistical nightmare was a major contributor in the country's defeat in the war that followed 11 months later.

Bangladesh to Sikkim and beyond

The hijack drama was just one among the exploits of the RAW under its founder director. Kao had already made a name for himself in international operations when Indira Gandhi picked him for the job to lead India's spy agency in 1968.

She understood correctly that India lacked on the intelligence front in the 1965 war with Pakistan. She set about forming the RAW within two years of coming to power in 1966. Before that, the Intelligence Bureau was in charge of intelligence both inside and outside the country.

Kao was IB's most celebrated officer. Even Chinese premier Zhou Enlai had congratulated him for exposing the role of Taiwan behind the explosion of an Air-India aircraft carrying delegates to the Afro-Asian summit in Indonesia in 1955. Zhou was supposed to fly in the doomed aircraft. He cancelled the journey because he was taken ill.

Kao was succeeded at the helm of the RAW by his right-hand man, Sankaran Nair. The two spymasters were responsible for the creation of two rebel militias in Bangladesh, the Mukti Bahini and the lesser known Kader Bahini. Joining forces was Brigadier M B K Nair who managed to leak Pakistani army secrets.

After the formation of Bangladesh, the RAW struck again with the accession of Sikkim. Sikkim was an independent kingdom like Nepal and Bhutan. All was well until the Sikkim king thought of moving the Himalayan kingdom into the US sphere of influence at the behest of of his American wife.

Indira Gandhi wanted the RAW to foment a political revolt in the neighbouring country. P K Banerji, who was in charge of the eastern front in the organisation, instigated the political parties of Sikkim to start a movement for democratic reforms. The process set in motion by the RAW led to the formation of an elected legislature which decided in favour of merging with India.

The RAW had received valuable insights into a plan to assassinate Bangladesh president Mujibur Rehman. Though Kao himself flew to Dhaka to apprise the president of the situation, Rehman did not take the warning seriously. Six months later, the president was killed in a military coup.

The bitter years

The RAW's darkest hour came during the Emergency of 1975-77. The opposition alleged that the prime minister was using the spy agency for internal political purposes. RAW officers insisted that the organisation had role to play in the internal emergency. It was the IB which helped the prime minister keep a tab on her opponents, they said.

Nevertheless, the RAW had fallen from grace. Morale was low. Kao resigned. His successor, Sankaran Nair, followed suit within four months. The RAW would not bounce back until Indira Gandhi returned to power after the election of 1980.

The RAW was hit by a brief scandal in 1983 when director N F Suntook went missing on the eve of retirement, sparking strange conspiracy theories. Some dailies alleged that he was an American double agent who feared that his successor could blow his cover.

Suntook returned two weeks later. He had gone to Mauritius on Indira Gandhi's order to prevent a coup.

Humbling the ISI

In the 1980s, the RAW had a new intelligence front to guard. The Khalistan separatists in Punjab were found to have received aid from Pakistan's ISI. The Pakistani spy agency did not heed warnings to stay away from India's internal affairs.

The RAW struck back by banding together two outfits to plant bombs in Pakistan's Sindh and Punjab provinces. Pakistan soon raised the white flag in the intelligence warfare. ISI chief Hameed Gul met RAW chief K C Verma in the presence of Jordan prince Hassan bin Talal in Switzerland to iron out differences between the two countries.

The RAW drew flak in India for its inability to foresee an intrusion along the border at Kargil in 1999. However, Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf himself was trapped when his phone talk with his chief of staff during a China visit was tapped by the RAW.

In 2004, the chiefs of the RAW and the ISI made a secret agreement, prompting Musharraf to promise A B Vajpayee that Pakistan would not help terrorist activities against India.

The ISI operatives who pumped in fake currency notes to India through Nepal were busted by RAW's pointsman in Nepal, Hormis Tharakan, who later served as the agency director after an interlude as the chief of police in his home state Kerala.

Tharakan was also instrumental in getting a Pakistani spy expelled from the country's embassy in Kathmandu.

Tharakan also lifted the public profile of the RAW by starting a series of lectures in memory of Kao.

Bad apples

The RAW had its share of flop shows. Kao's secretary S L Malik was accused of being an American spy. Major R S Soni, who handled the Pak desk at the organization, was accused of leaking information to the rival ISI. Unnikrishnan, a RAW officer in Chennai responsible for the Sri Lankan affairs, was exposed as a CIA mole and arrested.

The greatest shame was the disappearance of senior officer Rabinder Singh. Exposed as a US spy, he fled the country through Nepal in 2004. He managed to pass under the radar even though the RAW chief tipped off the station officer in Nepal.

A few bad apples could not eclipse the great work started by Kao and his men. Brilliant officers had held India's standards high. Ravindra Koushik was one among them. Nicknamed Black Tiger, Kaushik was perhaps RAW's most famous spy.

Born in Rajasthan in 1952, Kaushik was a good theatre actor. He was sent to Pakistan at the age of 23. He merged into the society as a student and even found a career with the Pakistani army. He rose to the rank of a major.

He leaked out many strategic pieces of information to the RAW until his cover was blown in 1983. He was jailed and tortured for 16 years until he died in 1999.