New Delhi: A decade separated the two incidents but both times, A S Dulat, former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), had to face the wrath of then Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah over the release of wanted militants in the Kashmir valley.
In his book Kashmir — The Vajpayee Years, published by Harper Collins, Dulat writes that the first incident was in December 1989 when five militants were released in exchange for the release of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiya who had been abducted and the second was in December 1999 when Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Mushtak Ahmad Zargar were swapped in Kandahar for the passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814.
Both times, it was Dulat, first as head of the Intelligence Bureau’s Srinagar unit and later as the R&AW chief, who was picked to placate the chief minister. And the experience, he writes, was harrowing.
His conclusion: “…that General Pervez (Musharraf) had to have a hand in the hijacking. The reason one can say so with such certainty is that such an operation could not have been undertaken without ISI support…” On the drama that preceded the release of militants for the IC-814 passengers, Dulat remembers how Farooq Abdullah rebuffed him: “You again… You were there during Rubaiya’s kidnapping. How could you come back again? I said then whatever you are doing is wrong, and I am saying it again. I don’t agree with it.” “He (Abdullah) experienced waves of anger. He would calm down and then would start all over again. Calm down and start again. Then he was at it: how weak Delhi was, how big a mistake this is, what a bunch of bloody idiots, buffoons. It just went on and on and on… He then called up Jaswant Singh and give him an earful: “aap jo bhi kar rahe hain, galat kar rahe hain.” He called up others in Delhi. He kept banging the phone down… “I will not let this Kashmiri fellow (Zargar) go, he’s a killer. He will not be released.’’ The shouting, Dulat recalls, continued for three hours, after which the chief minister announced he was going to see the Governor, another former R&AW chief Gary Saxena, to hand in his resignation.
The book mention another hitherto unknown fact about the IC-814 hijacking: while the plane was at the Dubai airport, India had contemplated a commando-raid, but local authorities refused to cooperate. “We tried to prevail on the Americans to put pressure on the UAE to allow us a raid, but India found itself isolated internationally. Nothing seemed to be going our way.”
03/07/15 Ritu Sarin/Indian Express
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In his book Kashmir — The Vajpayee Years, published by Harper Collins, Dulat writes that the first incident was in December 1989 when five militants were released in exchange for the release of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiya who had been abducted and the second was in December 1999 when Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Mushtak Ahmad Zargar were swapped in Kandahar for the passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814.
Both times, it was Dulat, first as head of the Intelligence Bureau’s Srinagar unit and later as the R&AW chief, who was picked to placate the chief minister. And the experience, he writes, was harrowing.
His conclusion: “…that General Pervez (Musharraf) had to have a hand in the hijacking. The reason one can say so with such certainty is that such an operation could not have been undertaken without ISI support…” On the drama that preceded the release of militants for the IC-814 passengers, Dulat remembers how Farooq Abdullah rebuffed him: “You again… You were there during Rubaiya’s kidnapping. How could you come back again? I said then whatever you are doing is wrong, and I am saying it again. I don’t agree with it.” “He (Abdullah) experienced waves of anger. He would calm down and then would start all over again. Calm down and start again. Then he was at it: how weak Delhi was, how big a mistake this is, what a bunch of bloody idiots, buffoons. It just went on and on and on… He then called up Jaswant Singh and give him an earful: “aap jo bhi kar rahe hain, galat kar rahe hain.” He called up others in Delhi. He kept banging the phone down… “I will not let this Kashmiri fellow (Zargar) go, he’s a killer. He will not be released.’’ The shouting, Dulat recalls, continued for three hours, after which the chief minister announced he was going to see the Governor, another former R&AW chief Gary Saxena, to hand in his resignation.
The book mention another hitherto unknown fact about the IC-814 hijacking: while the plane was at the Dubai airport, India had contemplated a commando-raid, but local authorities refused to cooperate. “We tried to prevail on the Americans to put pressure on the UAE to allow us a raid, but India found itself isolated internationally. Nothing seemed to be going our way.”
03/07/15 Ritu Sarin/Indian Express
