I was intrigued to know, via newspaper reports, that the CBI, which is prosecuting Maj Gen V.K. Singh (retd), had told the concerned court that it had not read his book. Presumably, the prosecution is for violation of the

Official Secrets Act; and not for some technicality, which would have merited some lesser procedure. How can a person be hauled up before court for revealing official secrets, if the prosecuting agency does not even know what secrets are being revealed? This is some kind of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ situation.

I was further intrigued to learn that the publisher was also raided; surely the publisher was not privy to violation of any official secrets, when the prosecuting agency itself is not clear about the whole thing. Have we moved from Lewis Caroll to Kafka territory? I should add that I have not read the book, but have only seen excerpts.

I recall that a couple of years back M.K. Dhar had revealed some activities of the Intelligence Bureau, of which he was an employee. There was some furore in public about disclosure of official secrets. I had read that book, and was quite disgusted, not by the fact that so-called secrets were revealed, but by the total lack of morality shown by the agency, and confessed to by Dhar, the perpetrator. Indeed the agency had been put to private use by those in power. In a couple of TV programmes, while attacking the contents and the method of working of the IB, I had expressed strong appreciation of Dhar’s courage in bringing into the public domain such sordid happenings.

... contd.