RAW official on IC-814 flight had dismissed intelligence input on hijack, says book

TNN

New Delhi, 06 April 2014: Days before the hijacking of Indian Airlines’ IC-814 flight, a RAW officer in Kathmandu had generated an input that the flight could be hijacked but his superior did not believe him and allegedly failed to send it to the RAW headquarters. Ironically, the day IC-814 was hijacked, this superior official was on board the flight.

 

This along with several other sensational claims, including failure of timely action by Narsimha Rao government to secure release of kidnapped foreign tourists in J&K in 1995, RAW operations to destroy Karachi harbour during 1971 war and vice president Hamid Ansari’s alleged inability to protect RAW agents during his tenure as ambassador in Iran, are part of a new book written by former RAW officer RK Yadav.

 

In the book titled "Mission R&AW", Yadav, who hit headlines in 1980 for floating a RAW employees’ union and then being suspended for it, claims that prior to the hijacking of IC-814 from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, a junior RAW operative, UV Singh, informed his counsellor, a senior officer of RAW at the Indian Embassy, that there was apprehension about hijacking of the plane by Pakistani terrorists.

 

"That RAW operative was asked by (the counsellor) to check the veracity of this report. When RAW operative told him that his source was a responsible officer, (the counsellor) rebuked him and warned him not to spread rumours. This report was never sent to RAW headquarters ..." the book says. It further details how a few days later, the flight was hijacked by Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists and the counsellor was flying in it. He kept his identity a secret, the book claims, or else he would have been killed.

 

The book, which has detailed chapters on India’s war with China and Pakistan, also narrates a fascinating story of a RAW operation under K Sankaran Nair in the build-up to 1971 war to collect information for a pre-emptive strike on Karachi harbour. Then defence minister Babu Jagjivan Ram had asked RAW to collect information on certain defences installed by Pakistan on cliffs near the harbour so that they could be destroyed and Karachi harbour bottled up to prevent Pakistan Navy from troubling free movement of Indian ships in the Arabian sea.

 

For this, two RAW operatives were prepared with pseudonyms of "Rod and Moriarty", who with the help of a Parsi doctor whose ship would go to Quwait via Karachi harbour, clicked pictures of the installations to help a naval strike. The two operatives posed as chicken pox patients on the ship preventing any Pakistani officer from checking them physically at Karachi.

 

The book also says that in 1995 when six foreign tourists had been kidnapped by J&K militants, RAW’s Aviation Research Centre had located the place where they were kept and Special Frontier Force was kept ready for a rescue operation. However, a detailed note sent to the PMO was not communicated to PM Narsimha Rao who was on a visit to South India. On his return two days later, he gave his consent for an operation but by then the terrorists had changed the location.