For central security agencies and anti-Naxal sleuths last Monday’s “big catch” Kobad Ghandy may have been a relatively new face dodging them since the late 1980s but the name had made it to the police records in Mumbai much earlier, in 1975, months before emergency was declared.

Many in the security circles agree that this recorded entry—with the then Special Branch I, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Bombay Police— and the context in which it’s mentioned give a “very good indication” of his early influences and beliefs.

Months before emergency was declared, Bombay Police had begun rounding up revolutionaries allegedly making “anti-establishment thoughts public”. One of them was comrade Sunder Navalkar, then a Khalsa college professor. She was brought to the office of the Special Branch and interrogated for making extremist statements that were becoming increasingly popular among the youth. At her Dadar residence, police also allegedly found extremist literature and methods of carrying out Naxal attacks. The interrogation by the then Deputy Commissioner of Police, (SB 1), J V Pai, Assistant Commissioner of Police N S Nadkarni, lasted many hours with Navalkar “essaying her thoughts on extremist movement and the social cause”. It was only towards the end, says a retired police official, that Navalkar spoke about her contacts and some of her “best” students, most of them fresh out of degree colleges. “...and, Kobad. He is the brightest. I see a future in him”.

Ghandy was then studying Chartered Accountancy in London. But much before he left for studies abroad he had made many interactions with “like-minded people” and attended many of their lectures in Dadar. Sources in Mumbai Police confirm “old records state he was under surveillance since then”.

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