When CIA 'money-trapped' a R&AW officer

Sandeep Unnithan. 

A recently released book authored a former R&AW official has alleged that the CIA used its mole inside India's external intelligence agency to try and get information on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

Rabinder Singh, a retired army officer and joint secretary posted in R&AW headquarters, was compromised by the CIA sometime in the 1990s. In May 2004, Rabinder and his wife fled to the US with his wife via Nepal where they currently live under assumed identities.

'The CIA through R&AW wanted to have corroborative evidence from R&AW so that they could get an independent and unbiased intelligence assessment about Iraq, which would strengthen their case for world opinion in attacking Iraq for possession of WMD. Rabinder Singh on his part tried to get such reports from his connections in R&AW," RK Yadav, a former officer in the external intelligence agency, writes in "Mission R&AW". The book was formally launched in New Delhi on July 17 by former external affairs minister Natwar Singh.

Yadav quotes the findings of an internal investigation by R&AW to state that Rabinder's recruitment as a mole by the CIA had to do with the US spy agency's need for intelligence in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

'Operation Iraqi Freedom' was preceded by a year-long campaign where the US built up world opinion that Saddam Hussain's alleged development of nuclear and biological weapons and proximity to Al Qaeda made him a threat to the US. This was around the time, Yadav says, Rabinder Singh was on a 'spying spree' inside R&AW headquarters and worked for unspecified amounts of money which his handlers paid him.

Singh, Yadav writes, got several top secret files from SK Gupta, head of the agency's Science and Technology desk, photocopied them and sent them to the CIA.

R&AW's S&T desk set up by former DRDO scientist K Santhanam in the 1970s, had detected the Kahuta nuclear plant in Pakistan in 1978. Yadav however adds he has no corroborative evidence to prove that these reports were used by the CIA to build up their specious case for the invasion of Iraq.

Rabinder Singh's recruitment as a CIA mole also had to do with the US agency's failure of the CIA to detect India's 1998 Pokharan nuclear tests. The CIA, heavily reliant on technical intelligence for picking up signs of activity at test sites, then declared its intent to 'recruit agents in every field and department of the Indian government'.

During his stint at the head of the agency's South-East Asia division, Rabinder continued to seek information from other departments within the agency. This conduct aroused the suspicions of at least one mid-ranking official within the organization, S Chandrasekhar, who alerted the agency's counter-intelligence wing in January 2004. Rabinder was placed under intensive surveillance by the CIW for nearly four months.

Yadav's book alleges Rabinder Singh successfully escaped because certain senior officials in the agency and government were complicit in his getaway. The NDA government asked then R&AW chief CD Sahay not to arrest Rabinder Singh because they feared an adverse impact on the Lok Sabha elections, held between April 20 and May 10, 2004. Alerted by the surveillance, Rabinder and his wife Parminder slipped away to Nepal. Here, the couple were given new passports that showed them to be US citizens 'Rajpal Prasad Sharma' and 'Deepa Kumar Sharma' in Nepal as they boarded a flight from Kathmandu to Washington on May 5, 2004

The Rabinder Singh case was the most grevious penetration of the R&AW in recent years. Earlier, a senior R&AW official KV Unnikrishnan, the agency's station chief in Chennai was honey-trapped by the CIA in 1987.

Rabinder Singh was declared a proclaimed offender in 2009 but his case remains in cold storage because of his disappearance.

In November 2005, a senior R&AW official completed an internal inquiry into the damage caused to the agency by Rabinder Singh's penetration. The report which is believed to name a number of senior agency officials, was never made public.

In April 2009, Yadav filed a Public Interest Litigation seeking details about 57 R&AW officials who allegedly supplied information to Rabinder Singh and sought criminal action against 19 of them believed to have been indicted by the internal report. The PIL was dismissed by the courts on grounds of lack of proof.

Former R&AW official B Raman compared Rabinder Singh's defection to the 1994 Aldrich Ames case. Ames, a CIA official in the counter-intelligence analysis group was uncovered as a KGB mole. With one very important difference. Ames is currently imprisoned with no hope of parole. Rabinder Singh, lives in the US as a free man.

via India Today

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Ex Military Intelligence official in fake encounters: CBI asked to hold inquiry

Deepu Sebastian Edmond.

Ranchi: The Jharkhand government has asked for a CBI inquiry into reports that a former Military Intelligence (MI) official and some CRPF officers falsely projected at least 150 Adivasi youths as members of various Left Wing Extremist (LWE) organisations in 2011-12, making them “surrender” in a bid to boost statistics.

These youths were reportedly lured with the promise of jobs in the paramilitary forces. They were reportedly told that these jobs were being offered to surrendered members of LWE groups. Some of them were even made to pay as much as Rs 2 lakh.

After their “surrender” in late 2011, these youths were kept in the old Ranchi jail for up to a year, guarded by some personnel of the 203rd Battalion of the CRPF’s CoBRA. This jail was not in use since 2006, when a new jail was built on the outskirts of Ranchi.

State government sources said the “scam” was the result of an ambitious project of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) that went wrong. The MHA had brought in former MI officer Ravi Bodra, now accused of being the “lynchpin”, after his work in Assam where he convinced some Bodo militants to surrender.

“Bodra was in the Army and served in Nagaland. He later became an MI officer and was effective in getting a number of extremists to surrender in Assam. He wanted to do the same in Jharkhand and was successful for a while in Khunti district,” said Ranchi SP Anup Birthare. However, he refused to divulge which agency had given Bodra, also known as Ravi Barla, the Jharkhand mission.

“The MHA decided to use him to boost the surrenders here. The CRPF as well as the police were kept in the loop about Bodra’s activities. Bodra also maintained good relations with Maoist leaders,” said sources. There was even a plan to present the youth en masse before a minister of the MHA.

An FIR registered at the Lower Bazaar police station on March 3 this year lists Bodra, Dinesh Prajapati, Caroline Kerketta and another individual as accused. Prajapati was the director of Dighdarshan Coaching Institute and Kerketta acted as an agent. “We have recorded statements of 18 students claiming that Prajapati and Bodra took Rs 55,000-1.5 lakh from each of them, promising jobs in the Army and paramilitary forces, and then made them pose as Maoists,” said Birthare.

However, it is not clear whether those responsible for the “scam” also claimed the MHA’s benefits for surrendered members of LWE groups, who are liable to receive Rs 1.5-2.5 lakh, depending on their rank in the organisation. They are also paid Rs 4,000 per month as stipend for the first 36 months.

The Sunday Express met 14 such youths who claimed that 500-550 others hailing from Ranchi, Khunti, Gumla and Lohardaga districts were in jail with them. None of them have a criminal record.

“A man named Vijay Bara came to the village in November 2012 and said the CRPF was conducting direct recruitments. At first, he said we would have to pay Rs 30,000. This was increased later,” said Sundra Kujur of Gutia-Jamgai village in Namkum block of Ranchi district. A total of 13 youths, aged between 19-31 years, paid Rs 30,000-60,000 and surrendered as “Maoists” from this village.

“I went with Ramesh Tidu (another youth) to Bara’s house in Chalangi village in Khunti’s Torpa block to pay the money. In the evening, three Boleros with ‘Bharat Sarkar’ written on them came to Chalangi. There were others inside. Once we got inside the car, Ravi Bodra gave each of us a pistol and a bullet. He then explained that we would have to surrender,” said Sundra.

Though it was the first time he was holding a firearm, Sundra knew what “surrender” meant. “I would have to pretend to be a Maoist. Anything for a job, I thought,” he said.

Bodra also instructed the youths on what to say to their interrogators. Sundra would later claim that he was part of area commander Ranjit Bodra’s armed squad, fellow villager Alok Tidu claimed he was part of Nageshwar Pahan’s squad.

“Most of us did not even know whether these area commanders were of the CPI(Maoist) or the PLFI. I was told Pahan was a PLFI leader and that I was supposed to have been a porter in his squad for about a year-and-a-half,” said Alok Tidu.

In the jail, both Bodra and Bara did not enter the room in which the CRPF officials stood. The youths, who were made to surrender in small groups over a month, were asked to sign a register. They were sent to cells which were kept unlocked throughout the duration of their stay and allowed to keep their cellphones.

The youths said they were given two hours of physical training each morning and were expected to clean the jail premises later. A senior government official said those responsible for the “scam” paid CoBRA personnel for food provided to the youths.

They were allowed to leave the premises for two-three days every three months or so, after making prior requests. When they finally realised that it was all a “scam”, they went on “leave” and never returned.

“Two senior officers named Lakhinder and Chetan were responsible for us. Whenever a senior officer came, we were asked to stay out of sight and keep quiet,” said Sundra, who stayed in the jail for nine months. When contacted, the officer named Chetan did not give his second name and refused to comment.

Despite recording the most LWE incidents in the country in 2012 and 2013, the number of those who surrendered in Jharkhand was just six and 15 respectively. This year, the figure stands at four up to May 31. In contrast, Andhra Pradesh recorded 301 surrenders in 2012, while Orissa recorded 101 in 2013.

via Financial Express

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Commanding officer of Army Intelligence unit under scanner

New Delhi: The commanding officer of an Army Intelligence unit and a Captain-rank woman officer are under the scanner after a purported sting operation suggested that they were allegedly involved in extra-judicial killings and a dacoity case in Nagaland and Assam respectively.

In the sting operation of jawans of the 3 Corps Intelligence Unit, a person, claimed to be an Army Havaldar, is heard saying that the unit Commanding Officer, a woman Captain and a few jawans were involved in the killing of three persons inside the headquarters area.

It is alleged that a Major-rank officer of 21 Para Special Forces of the Army, was the main person behind the killing of the three persons, whose bodies were reportedly thrown inside the jungle. In the report, it is also alleged that the unit officers had held up the wife of a commander of a terrorist group and sought a "levy" of Rs 1 crore in Dimapur in Nagaland. In the particular incident over the alleged extra-judicial killings, the army had stated that a one-man inquiry team instituted by it in the case had given a clean chit to the officers facing the charges.

The same officers were also charged with being part of a dacoity case in Jorhat in Assam and the Gauhati High Court is still monitoring the case. The Army investigation processes have also not been completed in the last two years. The case had taken interesting dimensions in 2012 when the then Army Chief Gen VK Singh had put present Vice Chief of Army Lt Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag under the promotion ban for mishandling of the dacoity case.

via Firstpost India

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Two Years On, Army Still Probing its Men

NC Bipindra. 

The Indian Army keeps fighting itself as the internal campaign against Technical Services Division intelligence operatives continues. At the top of the hit list of five officers from the TSD is the unit’s chief Colonel Hunny Bakshi, an intelligence corps officer considered a legend among his peers for his deep penetration network and counter intelligence skills. The Army could soon initiate court martial proceedings against Bakshi, who is now on “punishment posting” in the inconsequential Bangalore Sub-Area of the Army since December 2012.

The case relates to the arrest of the TSD’s head clerk Shivadasan on April 2012 in Kochi, caught when he was allegedly receiving a part payment in return for allegedly providing ISI classified information. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), which laid the “trap” to nab Shivadasan, had claimed the head clerk had demanded `1 crore from his ISI handler for handing over “information” on troop deployments and had sought an advance of `60 lakh. Sleuths from DRI claimed they had “trapped” the head clerk when he was about to hand over a compact disk, pen drive and documents holding sensitive information.

Though the arrest happened when General V K Singh—under whose tenure the TSD was set up in the aftermath of the 26/11 terror attacks—was still the army chief, the case gained traction only after his retirement in May 2012. In June 2012, a few days after General Bikram Singh succeeded him as Army chief, the details of the “trap” were leaked to the media.

 Ahead of the leak, TSD had maintained that the head clerk was only a bait to get to ISI operatives working against India through contacts in Dubai and it was part of a larger counter-espionage game. In November 2012, the DRI handed over its case to the Army, which ordered a Court of Inquiry into the DRI “trap”. Apart from the head clerk, the inquiry also examined Bakshi and his role in the episode. Following the inquiry, the Army had carried out Summary of Evidence (SoE)—the process for preparing a chargesheet—in the case. The Army transferred Sivadasan’s custody to a unit, headed by present Army vice chief Dalbir Singh’s younger brother Col. Dharmbir Singh. He now awaits court martial, in which Bakshi too may be tried, sources said. This move comes after the head clerk had been attached to the unit for over 20 months without even a chargesheet. It was only after he moved the Armed Forces Tribunal for bail that the Army filed a tentative chargesheet against him, sources said.

Meanwhile, Bakshi put in his application for premature retirement on January 8, 2014. But, just three weeks later, he withdrew it and decided to continue in service after his seniors communicated that he would face “disciplinary action” in the case.

Action is yet to be taken on the Board of Officers’ report of 2013 on TSD in which, too, Bakshi’s name figures. The report suggested TSD paid off some Kashmir politicians to bring down the Omar Abdullah government, apart from paying a Kashmir NGO to file a court case against Bikram Singh in a fake encounter case. The TSD had been disbanded in mid-2013 after Gen Bikram Singh took over.

via The New Indian Express

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