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

When I was asked to write this piece, I initially declined. Not because I did not want to do it, but because I felt weak and defenceless. It was something akin to what a soldier feels when his rifle is shot out of his hands or a school boy who breaks the nib of his pen during an examination. For an author, the loss of his computer is no less calamitous, especially if it has all his research material collected over several years.

On September 21 a dozen men from the CBI barged into my home and began searching for ‘incriminating’ material connected with my book India’s

External Intelligence: Secrets of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) which is supposed to have revealed ‘secrets’ that can harm national security. After rummaging around for three hours, they took away my computer, passport, personal diaries and some notebooks. They also confiscated two files, both containing photocopies of certain documents.

The first had certain papers connected with the court case of Brigadier Ujjal Dasgupta, which had been given to me by his wife and sister, who had sought my advice in the matter. The second file, or envelope, had photocopies of some letters given to me — fortunately it was in a public place and I was not alone — about two months earlier by a person who claimed that some people in the RAW were trying to capture his brain using the medulla technique. He said that he had read my book, and thought that having served in the technical wing of the RAW, I would be able to help him. After going through the papers, both Brigadier Anand and I agreed that he appeared to be mentally unsound. I kept the papers so that I could return them to him when he contacted me again, as he had indicated. It was only after the CBI search that it dawned on me that they were probably ‘planted’ soon after the book was published and the RAW’s efforts to get it banned did not succeed.

Apart from the sense of outrage at this wanton attack on my privacy and reputation, I was filled with shame and helplessness. In the 40 years that I had worn the colours of my country, not once had I been so disgraced. And what was my crime?

That I wrote a book about an intelligence agency that is...

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

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