R K Yadav left Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) in 1989 with a reputation as one of the toughest spies in the outfit. As a Class I officer recruited in 1973, Yadav served on the China desk and various other postings in Rajasthan and Punjab. Sources say he was close to R&AW founder-director R N Kao and his successor K Sankaran Nair. Although little is known about the functioning of RAW, Yadav in his upcoming tell-all book Mission R&AW has given explicit details including vanished R&AW spies and the external Intelligence agency’s role during the 1975 Emergency.
VANISHED R&AW SPIES
Although the CIA was found directly involved in compromising two R&AW officers Rabinder Singh and K V Unnikrishnan, Yadav claims that at least eight other R&AW officers managed to clandestinely migrate and settle in foreign countries like the US and Canada with the help of their spy agencies. Sikander Lal Malik, personal secretary to Kao for 17 years, managed to get two years’ extension after completing his mandatory tenure in New York. Malik got a green card with the help of US officials, and resigned from R&AW. Yadav says Malik settled in the US permanently in 1976 and he could have been debriefed enough to have done extensive damage to Indian Intelligence. Assistant director Major RS Soni, working on the sensitive Pakistan desk, was suspected of passing classified information to ISI. Fearing arrest by the counter-Intelligence branch of R&AW, he disappeared from home in 1977 and was never traced thereafter. Subsequently, it was discovered that Soni had migrated to Canada.
Another senior field officer Ashok Sathe was recruited by CIA while posted at the Indian Mission at Ulan Bator in Mongolia. Sathe was covering China operations and was later transferred to Khorramshahr, Iran. While serving there, Sathe was caught embezzling secret funds and was recalled. He set fire to his office, destroying all the secret documents before departure and subsequently retired from R&AW in 1977.
“Soon after retirement, it was discovered that Sathe had a green card. He settled in California,” Yadav claims in his book.
R J Khurana, an additional secretary with R&AW, managed green cards for his entire family while serving in Washington during 1998-99. So did M I Bhaskar, who served in Japan and Washington. After completing three years in the US, Bhaskar returned to India, resigned and now lives in Washington.
RABINDER SINGH ALIAS R P SHARMA
There has been much speculation over the fate of Rabinder Singh, the R&AW agent who was spying for CIA, when he disappeared before he was apprehended for spying for the US. He was a joint secretary in R&AW at the time. Singh flew to America from Kathmandu along with his wife on May 7, 2004, using a fake identity in the name of Mr and Mrs Rajpal Prasad Sharma. The R&AW unit at Kathmandu did nothing despite clear intelligence on Singh’s escape plans. The R&AW even managed to get copies of their visas and embarkation cards. These documents reveal that the CIA on April 7, 2004, issued US passport number 017384251 to Singh. His wife Parminder Kaur was also given a US passport on the same day in the name of Deepa Kumar Sharma. Both boarded Austrian Air flight number 5032 on May 7, 2004, from Kathmandu. Singh was assisted by CIA operative David M Vacala.
BIHAR POLITICIAN IN ISI NET
Yadav claims that in the 1990s, he had information about politicians of Bihar being business associates of Salim Mia Ansari, a leading ISI front man in Nepal. A R&AW agent had procured photographs of a firebrand political leader with Ansari. Yadav, in his book, says they were involved in smuggling and several intelligence reports unearthed the ISI-politicians nexus but no legal action has been taken.
R&AW ROLE DURING EMERGENCY
A special desk, Front Organizations (FO) was formed in June 1975 to keep tabs on the movement of political adversaries of Indira Gandhi outside India. Yadav claims that R&AW operatives monitored their telephone calls and postal letters. Movements of the leaders and their family members were monitored by undercover R&AW officials based in Indian Missions abroad.
Laila Kabir, wife of George Fernandes, a bitter critic of Emergency, was suspected to have sought asylum in France then governed by the Socialist Party. An enquiry was conducted by the R&AW in France but she could not be traced.
“The FO desk was subsequently dismantled and all records were destroyed on the eve of Janata Party coming to power in March 1977,” Yadav writes.
OPERATION KARACHI
Prior to the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, ‘Rod’ and ‘Moriarty’—two undercover R&AW operatives—were asked to generate Intelligence on Karachi port, which the Defence Minister of the time Jagjivan Ram wanted to attack if hostilities with Pakistan began. ‘Rod’ and ‘Moriarty’ (named by someone with a sense of Sherlockian humour) recruited a Parsee doctor who owned a ship operating between Mumbai and Kuwait that provided medical assistance to seamen. With photographic equipment, ‘Rod’ and ‘Moriarty’ got admitted as patients in the sickbay of the ship which was docked at the entrance of the harbour. Pakistani CID unit was informed that they had come down with chicken pox. In two days, R&AW spies took sequential photographs of harbour. Once in the Arabian Sea, the ship sailed to Kuwait and films were sent by diplomatic pouch to New Delhi and later handed over to Naval chief. When war broke out in December, the Indian Navy launched a successful attack destroying over six Pakistani ships using the inputs of the two spies.
ARMS DEALERS-POLITICIANS LINK
Yadav claims in his book that some time in 1998, a prominent arms dealer in London who was a high-profile RAW source gave a report to the station chief containing extensive details about the involvement of two prominent political leaders instrumental in facilitating arms deals in India. The report was forwarded to R&AW Delhi headquarters with proper grading of source but the government took no action.