‘Exact meaning of secret has not been given in OSA... In RAW, even circulars for tea parties are secret’

The Official Secrets Act was enacted in 1923. Those who fought for India’s freedom were well aware of its draconian provisions. These were used by British rulers to silence dissent and keep troublemakers behind bars. Most of these freedom fighters controlled the destiny of India in the years following independence from British rule. Many of them were legal luminaries with years of experience of fighting against such statutes. On August 15 1947, when the Tricolour was hoisted and the Union Jack brought down, the Official Secrets Act should have been consigned to the waste bin of history. Why this was not done will remain one of the greatest mysteries of that era. Perhaps some historian will find time to investigate this conundrum in the near future. By then hundreds of innocent Indian citizens would have spent years in jail for imaginary crimes, thanks to a British statute that has been amended even in Britain. For them, the British Raj will probably never end.

Cases of misuse of the Act are too numerous to recount. The infamous Samba spy case in which dozens of army officers spent years in jail on trumped up charges is a blot on India’s judicial system. A brilliant scientist, Captain B.K. Subbarao, was arrested in 1988 for being found in possession of his own doctoral thesis. The case dragged on for five years and he spent 20 months behind bars, being finally exonerated by the Supreme Court. His crime was that he had exposed technical errors in the nuclear submarine project on which BARC had spent crores of rupees.

It is strange that the exact meanings of the words ‘secret’ and ‘spy’ have not been given in the Official Secrets Act. As a result, almost anything can be graded secret. Intelligence agencies are particularly prone to this malaise. In RAW, even the circulars for tea parties are graded ‘secret’.

According to a recent news report in the Indian Express, RAW officials justified the crackdown on me, saying that the book referred to some projects that were either ongoing or delayed due to some technical or operational reasons. “Anybody in the business of intelligence will be able to figure out what these projects mentioned in the book refer to”. This is a strange argument. After all, the equipment was procured from foreign sources. Tender enquiries were sent to dozens of foreign vendors, informing them of the technical parameters of the equipment required by the RAW. Representatives of these companies visited the RAW offices to give presentations. If foreign vendors already know the technical details of the project, one can assume that the respective intelligence agencies of those countries also know about it. If the details are known to foreigners, how can their disclosure to the Indian public be considered harmful to national security?

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