North East district has always been a known area. I have been in its lanes many times looking for stories. It didn't come as a surprise when the census data revealed it has the highest population density in the country. In New Seelampur, it is not difficult to understand it is so. An edited version of the article appeared in The Indian Express on April 1, 2011.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, March 31, 2011
Now when he looks up, the sky comes to him in patches. Obscuring, obliterating the view are the new “highrises” that now dominate much of the landscape in the narrow quarters of New Seelampur, a resettlement colony established in 1965.
As per the 2011 Census provisional report, the north-east district of the national capital has the highest population density – 37,346 per sq km. In its colonies, the evidence is not hard to find. This is where urbanization has peaked. Rents are cheap, and finding accomodation isn't a task giving the lackdaisical police, residents said.
Vinod Kumar relocated to New Seelampur in the north east district in 1962 from Bela Road.
In the ensuing four decades, he has witnessed his block go through a transformation that took away much of the ease of the days gone by.
Seelampur is now in the midst of urbanization and ruralization, a culture cauldron with melting identities, and struggling families. This was one of the first resettlement colonies of Delhi where working class were dumped to make the city glisten and world class.
Across the road, French retailer Carrefour SA has opened its first store housing 30,000 brands. Like the builders, they too preyed on these neighborhoods. It sent its people into slums and unauthorised colonies, looking for kirana store owners to secure a clientele. Its glass building looks an anomaly among the hundreds of thousands of single-brick structures that are littered along the Metro line and along the river.
"There are all these manufacturing units and home-based industries. Every household is a unit where owmen work. In unauthorised colonies, one can buy a 100 square yard plot for Rs. 25 lakhs," local MLA Matin Ahmed said. "If we count all people, include those that no ration card, New Seelampur will have at least two lakh residents. How do we stop this? Census hasnt counted those who work in the factories. This is where employment is. How do we widen the roads? How do we improve basic amenities? Conditions are worse in unauthorised colonies like Jafrabad where almost no roads exist. This attracts a lot of builders. They have constructed 15 square yards flats. We all know how police acts. There is no code, no law."
It's nostalgia and then anger, and eventually frustration that grips him when he talks about his life in what has now become a ghetto with its youth dropping out of its schools, getting into petty crimes, and forcing its girls to remain indoors most of the time for fear of molestation.
North East district is an accident of geography. Iti is bounded by the Yamuna River on the west, Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh to the north and east, East Delhi to the south, and North Delhi to the west across the Yamuna.
Its three important administrative subdivisions Seelampur, Seema Puri and Shahdara. As per the 2001 census, the district's population was 1763712 and the density was 29,397 persons per square kilometer.
Over the last decade, the area absorbed a large number of migrants to the national capital.
Close to the South and Central districts, this is where most migrants came to settle over the years, finding their foot in these clusters where they could find cheap accommodation, and slowly try to integrate with the city.
Population went up as a result. With almost no regulations, and absolutely no planning, the resettlement colonies, mostly the allotments and the unauthorized slums like Sonia Vihar and JJ Colony, developed in a haphazard way.
In plots as small as 12 or 20 square yards, owners have built three-storey and in a few cases, five-storey buildings. The plots that were allotted by the government that resettled thousands of migrants in the 1960s ranged from 80 to 25 square yards were later sold to new settlers in parts.
“Yesterday, I called the police,” Kumar said, pointing to a building across the alley.
The top floor of the building had been dismantled, broken down.
“This is what has happened to this place. No wonder we are the highest in terms of human density. In that 20 square yard plot where this man built this four-storey building, there are 50 people living,” he said.
The one things that hasn't changed over the years is the demographics. The colony has remained poor. Only the working class lives here. A few jeans and shoes manufacturing units are scattered in its lanes, anchoring many of its women and migrant settlers.
“Because it was so close to central Delhi, this became the destination for the poor who could walk or cycle to their work sites,” he said. “Now builders have come to this part in the last three years and buying out these smallish plots and constructing flats and selling them to the poor who also want some ownership in the city.”
When the resettlement colony was planned and large populations, mostly migrants from Rajasthan, were moved to these parts, the plots were provisionally leased out to settlers and further sale was not allowed.
The area had been a farmland. But as the city expanded eastwards, and beyond the Yamuna, Seelampur found itself in the middle of rising land prices and overshooting demand and access to infrastructure.
In time, it transformed to a bustling region that specializes in the manufacture of jeans, leather shoes, jackets, incense, lathes, iron and timber goods, providing employment to workers in these home-based workshops.
Decades ago, when he had just moved to the plot allotted to his family, there used to be an open ground and houses looked different.
“We actually had a proper roof and these were single storey houses,” Kumar said.
The first wave of migrants to claim the colony were from Barielly in Uttar Pradesh and then Biharis followed in the 1970s.
Before then, Kumar recalled how they put their charpais in front of the houses and slept. Now, because crime has risen and there's fear that pervades the locality, they are confined to their small tenements.
Just down the lane, the cramped, colorful blue and green walls of the JJ Cluster are visible.
“That's the problem,” Kumar said. “Crime comes from there, and claims our neighborhood as well.”
Only a narrow drain divides the unauthorized from the allotments.
Then there was a wave of unplanned, illegal construction to absorb this new population.
Mohd. Sharif Ali, 22, built two extra floors of one-room each on his plot to rent those out. The family relocated to New Seelampur in 1965.
Rent is a survival factor in this colony. With inflation and given its social and economic indicators, informal sector workers and high dropout rates, it is a livelihood option.
“We get Rs. 2,000 as rent for the second floor. It helps,” he said. “But I remember the colony was not so crowded in the beginning. We had open grounds.”
Now, the children in the neighborhood play cricket in its narrow lanes.
The lanes are too narrow for four-wheelers to navigate them so even with their new money, those who can afford it, are hesitant to buy cars.
Those who bought now park them in the Metro parking lot across the road.
“What can they do? There is no space for humans here. Forget the cars,” Ali said.
A child sat defecating in the open drain. The lanes that lead into the labyrinths of this slum cluster are narrow. Lives spill over from the temporary structures on to the gullies. The lanes pervade the inner sanctums.
In one such establishment, a one-room tenement covered with an asbestos sheet, Phoolwati was cooking. Around 20 years ago, her husband bought the jhuggi. In this 12 square yard space, five people live. Outside, there is the border, the drain.
But the worlds it divide are strikingly similar to each other. Space is a non-entity here.
Spread over 60 kilometers, the north east district of Delhi has also been identified as Minority concentration district by Ministry of Minority Affairs. The basic parameters are minority population, illiteracy, work participation, health indicators etc. and given its lopsided development, it has remained one of the tragedies of the metropolis that has failed its inhabitants.
Now, the tags that sort of define this sprawling landscape of hutments and single-brick structures sans any aesthetics or planning, are violence, crime, poverty, and prejudice.
The north east district is a platter of resettlement colonies that were set on the vast farmlands in the city. In Jafrabad and Welcome and several other colonies, the victims of the 1984 Sikh riots were resettled.
Stories that come out of these human clusters are those of illegal embroidery units employing young children and anti-social elements that disturb the calm of the gentrified South Delhi and return to its maze of quarters where collective identity rules and the individual fades.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
"Take care in Japan"
Standing there in the school watching the Japanese children bid farewell to those that were returning to Japan, I felt sad. I also felt admiration for the great courage these people showed in the face of the tragedy.
An edited version of the story was published in The Sunday Express on March 20, 2011.
Here is the link http://epaper.indianexpress.com/IE/IEH/2011/03/20/ArticleHtmls/20_03_2011_012_003.shtml?Mode=1
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, March 18, 2011
A little girl embraced another girl.
“Take care in Japan,” she said, and put the garland around her neck.
The other girl bowed, smiled and walked to her seat.
In a row, they sat, garlanded and clutching booklets their classmates had presented them with drawings, notes and pictures.
These children at the Japanese School were returning to Japan, their country that is now in the middle of a catastrophe brought by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that has swept away thousands of people off the shore, and even shifted the planet by 25 centimeters on its axis.
The stoic clam in the face of the disaster is what has defined the Japanese reaction to the havoc created by the giant tsunami waves that ripped the shores of the archipelago.
Even the children sat calmly and any anxiety they had was concealed despite the images that showed on the Japanese television channel – bodies, uprooted houses and trees, shelter houses full of evacuees, queues of people waiting for food.
They knew about the crisis in the homeland. Before the farewell ceremony commenced, the 200 children sat in a solemn prayer meeting for the hundreds of nameless victims in their country. Iwao Sawada, the principal, told them about the tragedy and the children listened on. Then they observed silence for five minutes, their hands folded in prayer.
A teacher in a saree looked on. She too was returning to Japan.
Another student told her classmate “Don't forget me when you are in Japan. Eat well, study and don't fear. All will be well.” Then, she bowed. Both smiled and returned to their seats. A couple of mothers wiped away their tears. They quickly turned their faces away.
The school would close Friday. The classes had gone on. Even what they described as “scene from hell” with trucks bobbing on the giant waves, and fires from the nuclear plants touching the skies, had failed to disturb the routine that they so meticulously followed.
“We are Japanese. Two years. We will rebuild everything in two years,” Sawada said as he walked away to preside over the graduation ceremony at the Japanese School in Delhi a day before.
It was pride in the face of disaster, a stoic calm he maintained to haul himself from what he feared was striking at the core of his being – the tsunami.
He wasn't going to let the world judge them as weak humans. The tragedy had struck. The way forward was to work towards reclaiming what was lost.
The Japanese, he said, were a disciplined lot. They would come out of this as they had before. Disaster was no stranger to them. For them, it has been a tale of suffering and renewal. In 1923, the Great Kanto quake had killed more than 140,000. In 1995, the Kobe quake killed 7,000. Even Sendai, the face of the wreckage now, had witnessed a tsunami in 1896 that claimed around 30,000 residents.
Outside the school, cars lined up and Japanese mothers got out with their wards, smiling and bowing. Collectively they were going to deal with the disaster that pronounced Japan, their homeland, as doomed in the headlines, with the stoicism that is ingrained in them, the calm endurance that defines them.
Inside the office of the Gako Bunka Education Society, donations poured in. It was all done quietly, methodically. A notice was put up outside the school and checks with generous amounts started to stack up.
The money would be wired to help the victims of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that hit the Japanese archipelago on March 11.
For the small Japanese community in India that are mostly concentrated in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai, the news of the wreckage came via frantic phone calls, through the internet and emails and images on television.
They united in their grief and across their offices and schools, notices were put up asking for donations for their country.
It was quick, understated.
Katsu, the 72-year-old priestess at the Shanti Stupa in Indraprastha Park in the national capital, walked to the prayer room, chanting for those that perished.
“Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo.”
She beat the drums. The sound reverberated.
It is her belief that through the sound waves, the message of peace asking the victims to be strong would travel.
On Friday evening, she chanted again. For an hour, her hands relentlessly beat the drums.
In front of the frail priestess, the statues of Buddha and photos of Master Nichidatsu Fujii, who came to India in 1885, were lit up by a solitary bulb.
On the walls, images from Japan were hung.
Among them, the Fuji volcano in her native Shizouka captured for a calendar in the month of March.
Katsu has lived in India since 1986. In 1969, she had gone to Rajgir in Bihar and as she stood in front of the Buddha, she wanted to make an offering.
“I didn't have anything. No money. So, I gave myself to God. I became a monk,” she said.
The calamity that struck her country was God's will, she said.
“No bad fate falls like that. No storm comes just like that,” she said. “In the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thousands died. We will find a way out. This is a warning for the world. We must reflect on what went wrong. We will have to own the right path. We need faith.”
A monk from Orissa was flying to Japan the next day to help out. She is too old to travel but she said she would continue to pray for her country.
“What we can, we must do,” she said.
Outside, the white stupa loomed against the backdrop of a setting sun.
Katsu is among the 1,500 Japanese nationals that live in Delhi. There are around 4,500 Japanese residing in India.
When strangers stopped his wife and asked her if her family and friends were safe in Japan, Shinichi Yamanaka, the chief representative of Japan International Cooperation Agency, was overcome with emotion.
“It was such a warm gesture,” he said. “People we didn't know came up to us and showed their sympathies.”
This is Yamanaka's second assignment in India. When the earthquake hit, he was at a metro station with the new Japanese ambassador. He rushed to his office, collected the staff and inquired if everyone's family was fine. Then, they informed the Japanese volunteers spread across the country in rural areas working in the health care area.
“We are worried about the situation now with the leakage in the nuclear power plant. We are always checking news for updates. We have to see the situation and just have to put faith in the government,” he said. “They are doing their bit. See, the Japanese are disciplined and they coperative. Those are powerful qualities. We will come out of this.”
The tight-knit community has preserved its culture in the fast-changing landscape of the Indian society with its burgeoning malls, its aspirations.
There are three Japanese schools across the country. The one in Delhi is in a residential block, tucked away in one of its lanes.
There are no signs. Even the buses that ferry its students bear no names.
Its 200 students are from the expatriate families that are either working in the numerous Japanese companies in Gurgaon, Delhi and the Noida region.
Inside the campus, the homeland is recreated. There's a Japanese garden with its rocks and plantings and benches in the middle of the building. It can be viewed from anywhere. It is the courtyard where the school holds its assembly, and its functions.
The teachers are Japanese nationals. A few Indian staff work in its administrative wing but it is mandatory for them to know the language.
The children can attend the school that shifted to Vasant Kunj in 1991 from New Friends' Colony where it was first established in 1964, till Class 9 after which they can return to Japan to finish their studies.
The syllabus is what they follow in Japan.
Across the Deer Park, in the neighborhood market of Safdarjung Enclave, is Yamato-Ya, the Japanese convenience store.
There's a little table where customers can drink tea and munch on snacks.
There's everything that a Japanese cuisine requires in this small store.
A few meters down the block, there is the Japanese Association. There is a library, a recreation room and an office where one can find information on Delhi and where one can learn English, or go for a haircut like Hera, a Korean salon, or find a Japanese caterer.
In the corner, two bags full of books, including novels and magazines, were kept. These had been donated by expats who were leaving the country so the ones that were coming in could use them.
Takushi Arataki, 36, left Japan five years ago to be part of the growth that India promised.
He wanted to run a catering business for the Japanese community here. Five years ago, he came to India to learn Hindi. Now, he speaks fluent Hindi and has a successful business.
“I like it. But it is difficult too. We get cheated often,” he said. “But it is fun. We have a strong sense of community and we know most of the Japanese here.”
He is from Tokyo. When the earthquake hit, he saw the wreckage unfold on television. In Tokyo, his family was fine. The radiation hadn't reached there yet.
He believed in the Japanese resilience like others. They were going to bounce back. Such disaster were a way of life. Only this one was bigger. But no worries, he said.
In Tokyo, as tremors were felt, an Indian origin national Alok Parekh who wrote that as he was scrambling to call his family, he saw cafes open their doors to serve drinks and free bread to lighten up the mood.
“Having been born in Tokyo, I was somewhat accustomed to earthquakes. But I knew that the effects of this event would be catastrophic for the country. What I do know is that elevator conversations about 'last night's earthquake' will soon come to an end, Japan's taxpayers and corporations are rich enough to bear the cost of this tragedy, and the country will emerge stronger than ever once it starts rebuilding itself,” he said.
The same were echoed by the community here that got together to help out, and never let the world discount their courage. The calm Japanese in their country and elsewhere became the force to counter nature's fury. This was unlike anywhere – Haiti earthquake, Katrina floods.
The images of tragedy were a resilient people that worked silently against the tide, to turn it around.
And all of that was contained in the old Katsu, bent in prayer.
An edited version of the story was published in The Sunday Express on March 20, 2011.
Here is the link http://epaper.indianexpress.com/IE/IEH/2011/03/20/ArticleHtmls/20_03_2011_012_003.shtml?Mode=1
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, March 18, 2011
A little girl embraced another girl.
“Take care in Japan,” she said, and put the garland around her neck.
The other girl bowed, smiled and walked to her seat.
In a row, they sat, garlanded and clutching booklets their classmates had presented them with drawings, notes and pictures.
These children at the Japanese School were returning to Japan, their country that is now in the middle of a catastrophe brought by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that has swept away thousands of people off the shore, and even shifted the planet by 25 centimeters on its axis.
The stoic clam in the face of the disaster is what has defined the Japanese reaction to the havoc created by the giant tsunami waves that ripped the shores of the archipelago.
Even the children sat calmly and any anxiety they had was concealed despite the images that showed on the Japanese television channel – bodies, uprooted houses and trees, shelter houses full of evacuees, queues of people waiting for food.
They knew about the crisis in the homeland. Before the farewell ceremony commenced, the 200 children sat in a solemn prayer meeting for the hundreds of nameless victims in their country. Iwao Sawada, the principal, told them about the tragedy and the children listened on. Then they observed silence for five minutes, their hands folded in prayer.
A teacher in a saree looked on. She too was returning to Japan.
Another student told her classmate “Don't forget me when you are in Japan. Eat well, study and don't fear. All will be well.” Then, she bowed. Both smiled and returned to their seats. A couple of mothers wiped away their tears. They quickly turned their faces away.
The school would close Friday. The classes had gone on. Even what they described as “scene from hell” with trucks bobbing on the giant waves, and fires from the nuclear plants touching the skies, had failed to disturb the routine that they so meticulously followed.
“We are Japanese. Two years. We will rebuild everything in two years,” Sawada said as he walked away to preside over the graduation ceremony at the Japanese School in Delhi a day before.
It was pride in the face of disaster, a stoic calm he maintained to haul himself from what he feared was striking at the core of his being – the tsunami.
He wasn't going to let the world judge them as weak humans. The tragedy had struck. The way forward was to work towards reclaiming what was lost.
The Japanese, he said, were a disciplined lot. They would come out of this as they had before. Disaster was no stranger to them. For them, it has been a tale of suffering and renewal. In 1923, the Great Kanto quake had killed more than 140,000. In 1995, the Kobe quake killed 7,000. Even Sendai, the face of the wreckage now, had witnessed a tsunami in 1896 that claimed around 30,000 residents.
Outside the school, cars lined up and Japanese mothers got out with their wards, smiling and bowing. Collectively they were going to deal with the disaster that pronounced Japan, their homeland, as doomed in the headlines, with the stoicism that is ingrained in them, the calm endurance that defines them.
Inside the office of the Gako Bunka Education Society, donations poured in. It was all done quietly, methodically. A notice was put up outside the school and checks with generous amounts started to stack up.
The money would be wired to help the victims of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that hit the Japanese archipelago on March 11.
For the small Japanese community in India that are mostly concentrated in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai, the news of the wreckage came via frantic phone calls, through the internet and emails and images on television.
They united in their grief and across their offices and schools, notices were put up asking for donations for their country.
It was quick, understated.
Katsu, the 72-year-old priestess at the Shanti Stupa in Indraprastha Park in the national capital, walked to the prayer room, chanting for those that perished.
“Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo.”
She beat the drums. The sound reverberated.
It is her belief that through the sound waves, the message of peace asking the victims to be strong would travel.
On Friday evening, she chanted again. For an hour, her hands relentlessly beat the drums.
In front of the frail priestess, the statues of Buddha and photos of Master Nichidatsu Fujii, who came to India in 1885, were lit up by a solitary bulb.
On the walls, images from Japan were hung.
Among them, the Fuji volcano in her native Shizouka captured for a calendar in the month of March.
Katsu has lived in India since 1986. In 1969, she had gone to Rajgir in Bihar and as she stood in front of the Buddha, she wanted to make an offering.
“I didn't have anything. No money. So, I gave myself to God. I became a monk,” she said.
The calamity that struck her country was God's will, she said.
“No bad fate falls like that. No storm comes just like that,” she said. “In the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thousands died. We will find a way out. This is a warning for the world. We must reflect on what went wrong. We will have to own the right path. We need faith.”
A monk from Orissa was flying to Japan the next day to help out. She is too old to travel but she said she would continue to pray for her country.
“What we can, we must do,” she said.
Outside, the white stupa loomed against the backdrop of a setting sun.
Katsu is among the 1,500 Japanese nationals that live in Delhi. There are around 4,500 Japanese residing in India.
When strangers stopped his wife and asked her if her family and friends were safe in Japan, Shinichi Yamanaka, the chief representative of Japan International Cooperation Agency, was overcome with emotion.
“It was such a warm gesture,” he said. “People we didn't know came up to us and showed their sympathies.”
This is Yamanaka's second assignment in India. When the earthquake hit, he was at a metro station with the new Japanese ambassador. He rushed to his office, collected the staff and inquired if everyone's family was fine. Then, they informed the Japanese volunteers spread across the country in rural areas working in the health care area.
“We are worried about the situation now with the leakage in the nuclear power plant. We are always checking news for updates. We have to see the situation and just have to put faith in the government,” he said. “They are doing their bit. See, the Japanese are disciplined and they coperative. Those are powerful qualities. We will come out of this.”
The tight-knit community has preserved its culture in the fast-changing landscape of the Indian society with its burgeoning malls, its aspirations.
There are three Japanese schools across the country. The one in Delhi is in a residential block, tucked away in one of its lanes.
There are no signs. Even the buses that ferry its students bear no names.
Its 200 students are from the expatriate families that are either working in the numerous Japanese companies in Gurgaon, Delhi and the Noida region.
Inside the campus, the homeland is recreated. There's a Japanese garden with its rocks and plantings and benches in the middle of the building. It can be viewed from anywhere. It is the courtyard where the school holds its assembly, and its functions.
The teachers are Japanese nationals. A few Indian staff work in its administrative wing but it is mandatory for them to know the language.
The children can attend the school that shifted to Vasant Kunj in 1991 from New Friends' Colony where it was first established in 1964, till Class 9 after which they can return to Japan to finish their studies.
The syllabus is what they follow in Japan.
Across the Deer Park, in the neighborhood market of Safdarjung Enclave, is Yamato-Ya, the Japanese convenience store.
There's a little table where customers can drink tea and munch on snacks.
There's everything that a Japanese cuisine requires in this small store.
A few meters down the block, there is the Japanese Association. There is a library, a recreation room and an office where one can find information on Delhi and where one can learn English, or go for a haircut like Hera, a Korean salon, or find a Japanese caterer.
In the corner, two bags full of books, including novels and magazines, were kept. These had been donated by expats who were leaving the country so the ones that were coming in could use them.
Takushi Arataki, 36, left Japan five years ago to be part of the growth that India promised.
He wanted to run a catering business for the Japanese community here. Five years ago, he came to India to learn Hindi. Now, he speaks fluent Hindi and has a successful business.
“I like it. But it is difficult too. We get cheated often,” he said. “But it is fun. We have a strong sense of community and we know most of the Japanese here.”
He is from Tokyo. When the earthquake hit, he saw the wreckage unfold on television. In Tokyo, his family was fine. The radiation hadn't reached there yet.
He believed in the Japanese resilience like others. They were going to bounce back. Such disaster were a way of life. Only this one was bigger. But no worries, he said.
In Tokyo, as tremors were felt, an Indian origin national Alok Parekh who wrote that as he was scrambling to call his family, he saw cafes open their doors to serve drinks and free bread to lighten up the mood.
“Having been born in Tokyo, I was somewhat accustomed to earthquakes. But I knew that the effects of this event would be catastrophic for the country. What I do know is that elevator conversations about 'last night's earthquake' will soon come to an end, Japan's taxpayers and corporations are rich enough to bear the cost of this tragedy, and the country will emerge stronger than ever once it starts rebuilding itself,” he said.
The same were echoed by the community here that got together to help out, and never let the world discount their courage. The calm Japanese in their country and elsewhere became the force to counter nature's fury. This was unlike anywhere – Haiti earthquake, Katrina floods.
The images of tragedy were a resilient people that worked silently against the tide, to turn it around.
And all of that was contained in the old Katsu, bent in prayer.
Monday, March 14, 2011
The Samba spy story
Meeting the victims of any tragedy is never easy. In this case, it was even more difficult because these people were the victims of a hoax. An edited version of the story appeared in The Sunday Express on March 13, 2011.
Chinki Sinha
Jammu, March 11, 2011
In time, the definitions of the victims and the perpetrators started to overlap.
In the Jammu Central Jail, strangers connected by profession and betrayal and suffering met and forgave each other. In the evenings, they heard each others' stories, cried and gave hope to each other.
At first, when he saw Milkhi Ram walk into the prison, Satpal Singh was full of rage. He had been sentenced to 10 years in the prison because Milkhi Ram had named him during those countless interrogations. The torture was unbearable. They were given electric shocks, kept up the whole night, hung upside down from the ceiling, and burnt with cigarette buds. If they only agreed to implicate others, they would be exempted from the infernal treatment.
So Milkhi Ram had named Satpal Singh in the infamous Samba spy case that set off a chain reaction of sorts where one accused named a random official to get a break from the torture meted out to them by the army.
Around 60 odd jawans and officials found themselves in the midst of an espionage hoax that had two Pakistani agents at its crux. From this epicenter, the waves went out and drowned many lives in its fury.
The case dates back to more than 35 years. It all took place in the 168 Infantry Brigade in Samba district in Jammu. This is where the border that separates India and Pakistan runs.
These men were accused to crossing the border, colluding with the enemy and working against their country.
Milkhi Ram was named by Ram Lal, a fellow soldier, who in turn was named by the flamboyant Pakistani agent Sarwan Dass, who crossed the border first in 1972. He wanted to make money. In the other world, they promised him women, wine, money and everything else that he couldn't afford with his gunner's salary in the army.
It was in the interrogation centre that Milkhi Ram made a list at the behest of the officials.
“I took the names of Mulk Raj and Satpal Singh,” he said.
It has been a tough life so far. After he served his term in the Jammu prison, he returned. But with the tag of a spy, it was difficult to get absorbed in the society. It felt as if the sentence had been extended to eternity, he said.
Milkhi Ram served a total of seven-and-a-half years in prison. He had been sentenced to 10 years but got out earlier on the basis of his good conduct.
From the prison, the men had filed a case in the Jammu High Court in 1978. But nothing came out of it. The case was dismissed.
Setting their grudges aside, the men united in their fight against injustice, and their hope tied them together. All they wanted was that their names should be cleared.
Milkhi Ram bears the marks of his torture. His hands are scarred.
“They gave us electric shocks and it was horrible,” he said.
He later became a mason to get by. His family – wife and six daughters – suffered along with him.
Freedom is what they are after now. The fact that the case has dragged on in the courts for three decades now hasn't diminished. Even if in death, their names are cleared of the charges of spying, a grave dishonour for any ex serviceman, they'd feel vindicated, they said.
Life fell apart for Kamla Rani, the widow of Ram Lal, who was implicated by Sarwan Dass. He served time in the prison, came home a dejected man who had given up on life.
He was suffering from tuberculosis, too.
For almost seven years, Ram Lal woke up in the nights and sobbed. He looked lost.
“He used to cry and say that his life had come to an end,” Kamla Rani said.
Twenty years ago, the man who eventually lost his sanity left home. He never returned. The wife is in a limbo of hope and loss. She doesn't know if Ram Lal died or if he is still alive.
His two sons and one daughter had to quit school. Kamla Rani worked as a maid and brought up the children. But the damage had been done. The family is struggling. Kamla Rani can't even afford the train fare to go to Delhi to fight the battle.
“I want to know everything. We have fought with the government for 30 years. Now, there is no money to fight. I want compensation,” she said.
In the nights, his screams reverberates in her mind.
“He was physically and mentally tortured. We got him out on bail after a few years but by then he had broken down,” she said. “This is scar that we carry. For fourteen months I didn't know where he was. Then I found out. When I went to meet him, he was a different man. His bones had been broken.”
It was like being in a labyrinth. Hopes were crushed, but names were elicited. More entered the dungeons, and broken down by torture, they took even more names.
Then they all testified against each other, those they hadn't seen or met in some cases. But in the courts, they came prepared. They pointed out to the men in the docks and said they had taken them across the border.
Those who sat in judgment in the army courts scribbled sentences and assigned them prison terms.
Major N R Ajwani, the deputy adjutant judge advocate-general at the Northern Command, who sentenced Banarsi Lal to 14 years imprisonment after Sarwan Dass implicated him, was later arrested by the MI after he was named by Major AK Rana, who in turn was named by Captain RS Rathour, a bright official in the 168 Brigade in Samba. Rathour later wrote a book “Price of Loyalty” about the cases that were built on torture and his own ordeal and fall from grace while he was in Tihar serving his sentence of 14 years. He was arrested in 1978 after Aya Singh implicated him.
Banarasi Lal is a sad man.
It is in his deep, sunken eyes, that the story reveals itself. Banarsi Lal was arrested in 1977.
He had joined the armed forces in 1969 when he was in school. He had gone to the city with a friend who wanted to undergo the test for the army. While standing at the gates, he was spotted by an officer who asked him if he wanted to join and he said he'd rather study. But the officer insisted and he went through the test and other formalities and became a gunner.
“I was in the 217 Medium regiment,” he said. “I came to Samba in 1974 and was posted in Akhnoor.”
Sarwan and he were in the same unit. He had known Dass as a colleague only.
On Thursday, he met Sarwan Dass after almost 35 years. As the two men faced each other in Chakra, Banarasi Lal looked angry. He wanted to get away. Here was the man who he sourced all his suffering to.
"Forget what happened. It is the system," Dass said. "Come over to my house and we can talk. It was all our fate. This was pre-destined."
Banarasi Lal smiled and refused the offer. He sat in the car, and looked ahead.
"I don't want to talk to him. He is the man who started it all. He was never jailed for espionage. But we all became what they call us - spies."
When he was named and subsequently produced in the GCM with Major Ajwani as one of the presiding judges, he had refused to admit to crossing the border because it was a lie.
“Major Ajwani told me to admit so I could get a lesser sentence. There was no other way out. I refused. I got 14 years of jail,” he said. “They tortured me a lot. We still can't face people. It is a shame I carry everywhere.”
The ghosts of the past haven't left him. His children, who have grown up now, know about his case. They don't ask him. His wife never broaches the subject either.
Outside the Samba military headquarters, Banarasi Lal shook hands with another fauji. But he quickly stepped back. He didn't want to be carried away and say he once worked for the army, too.
It would initiate a slew of questions. Which brigade? When did you retire? Do you get pension?
“I want to walk as a free man. I once worked for the army too,” he said. “My identity is ambiguous. It is only a name with no past, no future.”
Banarasi Lal works odd jobs and lives in his native village near Bishna in Jammu.
Their regard for the army and what it does hasn't been tinkered by their own suffereing.
“We have to die in any case. But we wanted to die as soldiers and in combat,” Satpal Singh said. “We never hated the army. If at all, it provided us a purpose in life. When I joined in 1969, I was full of ambition. I wanted to serve my country. After a while, I came to terms with Milkhi Ram. He was suffering, too. Now, we fight together to get what is lost. Our honour.”
Samba is a sleepy town in Jammu. Recently, it was converted into a district. Through the day, the military convoys roll down its narrow roads. On either side of the road that leads to Ludhiana, there are army quarters.
Inside the Samba military headquarters where the 168 brigade is still stationed, it is a strange, unreal world.
“The rules of your world don't work here,” the man, who escorted us inside, said. “To asses the levels of this establishment is like measuring the sea's depth. Impossible.”
Thirty-five years later, the ghosts of the Samba spy scandal still haunt the 168 Infantry Brigade headquarters.
As he stubbed his cigarette, an army officer said he knew about the case but he wouldn't say anything further.
The Samba spy case as it came to be known as later started with the arrest of one Captain SR Nagial who was implicated by Aya Singh in 1976. Nagial is still fighting the case to get his name cleared. In the intervening years, he suffered what came his way. Any mention of the case and his name could still jeopardize what he so painstakingly built, he said.
But it was only in 1978 with the arrest of Captain RS Rathour that the connection with Samba was forged. Most of the hoax case victims belonged to the Samba brigade. The two spies also hailed from Samba district.
In the 1978 sweep and what followed later, the many jawans and majors were sentenced.
“It was done for getting rewards,” Major Ajwani, who lives in Mumbai, said. He was arrested in January 1979 after Major AK Rana named him. He served term for around a year and was later released because there wasn't much evidence against him.
It was Major Ajwani who later asked the Supreme Court to intervene and ask the Delhi high Court to pronounce its judgment on the case.
In 2001, Sarwan Dass had confessed in the Mumbai's magistrate court that he had named innocent people because he was forced to do so. He accused four MI officers—Brigadier T.S. Grewal, who was then MI deputy director, Brigadier (retd) S.C. Jolly, who was then a major, Captain Sudhir Talwar, and Colonel V.P. Gupta.
“I had given a statement. I had gone to Supreme Court in Delhi around a year ago. I was asked if his confessions were my own. I said yes and I left,” he said. “I don't know what happened to it.”
In 1977, Sarwan started naming people. He named gunners Banarasi Lal, Babu Ram and Sriram, Naib Subedar Daulat Ram and his battery commander Captain R.G. Ghalawat, who was his commanding major in Babina. Ghalawat later died of heart attack. The others still fighting the case say he was depressed. The tag of being a spy was something he couldn't deal with.
Rathaur, during his interrogation, named 11 Army personnel. The list included Captain A.K. Rana, Brigadier Karam Chand, Lt Col Kayastha, Major S.P. Sharma, Captain V.K. Dewan, Captain Sujjan Singh. Rana named 27 others from the 168 Infantry Brigade. He was jailed for 10 years.
It became a vicious cycle. Even Havildar Ram Swaroop's death in 1978, three days after he was taken into custody, didn't prevent the MI from spreading its tentacles to those it wanted to settle scores with.
Rathour, who now runs a security agency and lives in Gurgaon, said life was tough. When he walked out of the jail, he didn't have the bus fare to come back home. He spent years in a slum in Paharganj where his wife struggled to provide for the family.
“It was a nightmarish experience,” he said. “I built this from scratch. But the scars don't go away.”
Retired Brigadier SC Jolly, who now lives in Noida, and has been named as one of the perpetrators of the spy scandal, said he didn't want to comment on the case.
After years of fighting court battles, at first in Delhi High Court, and now in Supreme Court, the victims have now found some hope.
Last month, a damning piece of evidence emerged. The postmortem report of Havildar Ram Swaroop, who died in custody in 1978, was traced to the Aruna Asaf Ali government hospital in Delhi where the autopsy was carried out. For years, the army had maintained it had not tortured Ram Swaroop and he died of drug overdose but in the postmortem signed by Dr. B Singh, it states that he died of 39 injuries, including burn injuries.
He was declared dead at the base hospital in the wee hours of the morning of September 30, 1978.
Ram Swaroop was being interrogated at the interrogation centre near Naraina in Delhi and his body was found on the road.
Swaroop, who was 40 at the time and belongs to Udaka village in Haryana, was the only accused to have died in the scandal. The havaldar was posted in Samba in the 527 I&FS Company under the 168 Infantry Brigade. He was an intelligence havaldar and worked under Rathour. Once while he was posted in the field unit at Red Fort in Delhi, Rathour came to meet him, while he was under the radar of the Army.
Prime Minister Morarji Desai had wanted a probe into the death of Ram Swaroop but he was told by the Army that Swaroop was a spy.
Postmortem reports were never produced in the court like other documents that the victims are still asking for, documents that could prove their involvement in the espionage racket if indeed there were any as the Army maintained.
The Army has all along refused to produce this postmortem, dated October 1, 1978, in court. Swaroop died three days after being taken into custody by Military Intelligence (MI) for interrogation.
The fresh evidence has now been attached to their court petitions by the officers, including Capt. RS Rathaur, who was implicated by Aya Singh, still fighting to clear their names in the spy case and declared “innocent.”
Even Swaroop’s widow Anguri Devi is also planning to file a fresh appeal to reopen the case files of her husband’s death on the basis of the new evidence. She had filed a case in the Delhi High Court in 1996 but it was dismissed in 2001 for lack of evidence. Now, armed with the report, she has hopes of vindicating her husband's honour.
In 2000, judges K Ramamoorthy and Devinder Gupta of the Delhi High Court called the Samba spy case “a gross miscarriage of justice”. But in 2006, however, a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arajit Pasayat set aside the 2000 order of the Delhi High Court, and sought a re-examination of the case. But in 2007, the Delhi High court duly dismissed the cases of the two petitioners.
However, because the army has gone in appeal in the Supreme Court, the seven officers whose court martials were struck down by the Delhi High Court are still fighting their cases. They want to be declared “innocent.”
Same with the others. They are still hoping against hope that this may turn the case around and they'd be able to cleanse themselves of the tag of being spies and betraying their own country.
“You can see the marks on all of us. We can't hide the shame. It was forced on us,” Milkhi Ram said. “If not in this life, then maybe even after my death, I would want justice to be done. We would be free then.”
The spy
So many years later, his matchbox that he took out of his pocket still had a woman's picture on it. Only this time, it had “Made in India” written on it.
Sarwan Dass, the self-confessed Pakistani spy who implicated many men in his brigade after he was caught by IB and handed over to the army, once brought back a similar matchbox from across the border. It had a Pakisani model's picture on it. He loved them. The women on the other side were more beautiful, healthier and they were frank in matters of love, he said.
Money could buy him so much in the other world that he saw was struggling with poverty. Women were readily available. He was being paid by the Pakistani agents. They even arranged for liquor for him when he visited. In return for information on the army's establishment, they pampered him. He had dinner in the bungalows. They called for fish kababs and he loved his drinks.
He loved the luxuries of his spy life, its flamboyance and its promise. Everything was within reach.
As he lit his bidi in his house in Chakra village in Jammu where he now lives with his wife Lajwanti, he remembered those heady days.
Of course, it wasn't these cheap bidis that he used to smoke. He smoked those filter cigarettes.
When they came to arrest him, the Subedar Major sighted the 20-pack Wills brand cigarette pack in his trunk in Babina, Jhansi where he was then posted as a gunner for the army.
The official stared at the expensive cigarette box for a long time before admonishing the guards that accompanied him that they should look out for such sings.
With his salary in the army, Sarwan Dass couldn't have afforded those filter cigarettes.
That gave him away. His flamboyance, his love for a good life that his two acres in his village and his paycheck in the army would not have got him, was what made him cross the border.
They said in his village that if you crossed over to the other side of the border, you could strike gold.
That evening when he left home, and walked towards the border near his village, he had made up his mind. He was going to cross over.
It was a rainy evening in 1972. Dass walked through the fields. The fields stretched into eternity. On both sides, they looked the same.
In a wink, he was on enemy's terrain.
“It was a nasha. I didn't think it through. I just crossed,” he said. “In those days, there were no fences. You could just keep walking and in a few moments, you would be there. Besides, I was angry with our army, with the way they promoted people or assigned designations.”
He walked through the night and in the morning, he boarded a bus and got off at Sialkot in the afternoon. When they asked for the fare, he lied he had lost his money.
Hungry and dejected, Dass slept at the bus stop. In the night, policemen woke him up and asked him to produce identity. He kept quiet. They searched him, found his identity card that said he worked for the army and took him to the police station.
“After two days, I was sent to the Sialkot Gora Jail,” Dass said, his face twitching in memory of those grim days. “You just can't make out if it is day or night in that prison. There are small cells. Insects are crawling inside. It is filthy and in the middle of those cells, they have placed iron beds. It was dreary and cold.”
There, he saw a lot of Indians. They were tortured, and roamed around half-naked with scars visible on their bodies.
“I was scared,” Dass said. “Then, the Pakistani FIU came to me. They beat me up endlessly. I thought I should give in their demands. They wanted me to return and bring back information. They said they would reward me for my services.”
He was then dropped off at the border and he crossed over again. They had given him around Rs. 200. During that time, Dass was on holiday.
He crossed the border again after two weeks as he had been told.
“I gave the information on the units and was paid in return,” he said. “Between 1972 and 1975, I went to Pakistan a total of 10 times.”
They wanted him to recruit more people. That's how Aya Singh became a spy, too. They worked for Army's Field Intelligence Unit officer Major Akbar Khan.
The duo met in Babina in Jhansi where they were in the same unit and became friends. Dass saw Aya Singh, who belonged from a Jammu village, was also an ambitious man like him.
They came back together and one night in March 1973, they crossed over to the other side together. A car came to pick them up and thus Aya Singh became part of the spy network.
“We both didn't go back to the unit for six months,” Dass said. “Then we decided to go back to the unit. We were tried for desertion and sent to serve term in Secunderabad. Then, we went back to the unit.”
However, in 1975, the IB trapped Sarwan using a double agent. The agent produced a letter to the interrogation officials written by Sarwan.
Within a week, Dass was arrested.
But the arrest also led to MI's humiliation where its intra-system rival, the IB, had exposed a Pakistani agent working in their establishment.
Then started a chain of trials and confessions and court martials, triggered by MI's embarrassment in the face of the IB's discovery, and propelled by the inhuman torture.
It all led to the arrest of over 60 Army personnel of the 168 Infantry Brigade and its subordinate units in the Samba sector in Jammu.
Aya Singh and Sarwan Dass were interrogated and confronted. They took each other's name. On way to Jammu, Sarwan Dass jumped off the train near Jalandhar after duping the guards. He had latched the doors of the first class compartment they were travelling in from the outside.
He took a bus to his village, sat next to a woman and started off a conversation anticipating checking by officials once the news of his escape spread.
He finally reached his house, and met his wife Lajwanti and mother. A man came to take him away but he fought him off. It wasn't safe anymore.
He crossed over again. And this time, he stayed in Pakistan for around seven months.
“They had given me a quarter. They asked me to marry again but I resisted because even in the Koran that the maulvi taught me because Major Khan wanted me to understand Islam, it was written that I couldn't marry unless I divorced or had valid reasons.”
He used to cross over to his side for a few hours in the night to meet his mother and wife but never stayed. One night, Lajwanti pleaded to him to surrender. It was arranged. Dass surrendered at another village, in Mukhiya Booti Singh's house to the IB.
That was in 1975. He was given over to the army, tortured and coerced to take names.
“I had said punish me. I have committed wrong. But they didn't listen to me,” he said. “Aya Singh told me to keep lying. That was the only way out. He took this major's name. He was his relative. He was the first man to be jailed. I spent three years in prison. We had struck a deal with the MI officers. They told me to say Major AK Rana and Captain RS Rathour had come to Kandral to meet Major Khan. They were so obsessed they forgot that Kandral is a village in India and it is where the Kandral post is. The border is one-and-a-half kilometers away from Kandral post in Jammu. In 1974, if I was in Pakistan, how could I be in Kandral.”
After all this, Sarwan Dass rejoined the army. He was only tried for desertion and not for espionage. Aya Singh suffered a brutal fate. He was shot dead by the army at the border in 1986.
Now, the once flamboyant spy, barely makes ends meet. He cultivates vegetables and rice.
His wife, who waited it out for him, came to terms with her fate long ago.
“I had to spend my days in this world. I refused to remarry. His wedding gift to me was a lonely life. Much of it has passed,” Lajwanti said.
Even now, the taste of the filter cigarette lingers in his mouth. It is one of those leftovers from memory.
When we offered him a Marlboro, he lit it and took a deep drag.
“See, this is what the spy life gave me. Now, I can only afford bidis,” he said. “I regret what I did but they are the culprits, too. They should be booked and charged.”
The villagers have boycotted the family. Their relatives, brothers and other kin, don't entertain them. They haven't for ages.
“It is a difficult life but what can I do,” he said. “I was discharged from the army without pension.”
The one thing that breaks his defiance is the mention of Havildar Ram Swaroop who died in custody, tortured by the army as per the postmortem report that was recently recovered from a Delhi hospital.
“They tortured him so much. They asked him who he had met and he said 'you.' they asked what did they give him. He said 'you gave me whatever you gave me'. He wouldn't give in. They beat him till his eyes popped out,” Dass said. “I was there. If they call me to the court, I will testify. I will tell where they killed him and how.”
Maybe that would be the salvation he has been chasing all these years.
“I did wrong but I am willing to do right, too,” he said as he lit another of his bidis.
The matchbox with its model was on the side. Even now, the man has held on to the tidbits of his other life. It wasn't the same, but at least it was similar. Memories don't require much to come back. Because they are always on hold, ready to be retrieved. All he has now is the glory and the shame of his spy life – the former in its luxuries, the latter in its repercussions.
The Case
* Aya Singh and Sarwan Dass were arrested on the information of IB in
mid 1975 for spying against India for Pakistan. They were arrested
from Jhansi where they were posted.
* They were brought to Jammu at the joint interrogation centre
separately and Sarwan Dass escaped en route and went to Pakistan.
* Aya Singh was brought to Jammu JIC and later handed over to the army
for trial.
* In 1976, Sarwan Dass was arrested again. Dass claims he surrendered
but police claims they apprehended him. He was interrogated at the
JIC. While at JIC in Jammu, both named each other.
* They were kept in the MI custody and there, they started naming
people. Those who were named by them were arrested, tortured and it
went on.Trials went on and more arrests continued to be made.
* Captain Sewaram Nagial was arrested in 1976 and charged for crossing
the border.
* Aya Singh was made to name Captain RS Rathour.
* Together they duo implicated around 18 officials before Captain RS
Rathour, who was sentenced to 14 years. Around 50 officials lost their
designations, were court martialed and were sentenced.
* More arrests were made on the basis of confessions.
Chinki Sinha
Jammu, March 11, 2011
In time, the definitions of the victims and the perpetrators started to overlap.
In the Jammu Central Jail, strangers connected by profession and betrayal and suffering met and forgave each other. In the evenings, they heard each others' stories, cried and gave hope to each other.
At first, when he saw Milkhi Ram walk into the prison, Satpal Singh was full of rage. He had been sentenced to 10 years in the prison because Milkhi Ram had named him during those countless interrogations. The torture was unbearable. They were given electric shocks, kept up the whole night, hung upside down from the ceiling, and burnt with cigarette buds. If they only agreed to implicate others, they would be exempted from the infernal treatment.
So Milkhi Ram had named Satpal Singh in the infamous Samba spy case that set off a chain reaction of sorts where one accused named a random official to get a break from the torture meted out to them by the army.
Around 60 odd jawans and officials found themselves in the midst of an espionage hoax that had two Pakistani agents at its crux. From this epicenter, the waves went out and drowned many lives in its fury.
The case dates back to more than 35 years. It all took place in the 168 Infantry Brigade in Samba district in Jammu. This is where the border that separates India and Pakistan runs.
These men were accused to crossing the border, colluding with the enemy and working against their country.
Milkhi Ram was named by Ram Lal, a fellow soldier, who in turn was named by the flamboyant Pakistani agent Sarwan Dass, who crossed the border first in 1972. He wanted to make money. In the other world, they promised him women, wine, money and everything else that he couldn't afford with his gunner's salary in the army.
It was in the interrogation centre that Milkhi Ram made a list at the behest of the officials.
“I took the names of Mulk Raj and Satpal Singh,” he said.
It has been a tough life so far. After he served his term in the Jammu prison, he returned. But with the tag of a spy, it was difficult to get absorbed in the society. It felt as if the sentence had been extended to eternity, he said.
Milkhi Ram served a total of seven-and-a-half years in prison. He had been sentenced to 10 years but got out earlier on the basis of his good conduct.
From the prison, the men had filed a case in the Jammu High Court in 1978. But nothing came out of it. The case was dismissed.
Setting their grudges aside, the men united in their fight against injustice, and their hope tied them together. All they wanted was that their names should be cleared.
Milkhi Ram bears the marks of his torture. His hands are scarred.
“They gave us electric shocks and it was horrible,” he said.
He later became a mason to get by. His family – wife and six daughters – suffered along with him.
Freedom is what they are after now. The fact that the case has dragged on in the courts for three decades now hasn't diminished. Even if in death, their names are cleared of the charges of spying, a grave dishonour for any ex serviceman, they'd feel vindicated, they said.
Life fell apart for Kamla Rani, the widow of Ram Lal, who was implicated by Sarwan Dass. He served time in the prison, came home a dejected man who had given up on life.
He was suffering from tuberculosis, too.
For almost seven years, Ram Lal woke up in the nights and sobbed. He looked lost.
“He used to cry and say that his life had come to an end,” Kamla Rani said.
Twenty years ago, the man who eventually lost his sanity left home. He never returned. The wife is in a limbo of hope and loss. She doesn't know if Ram Lal died or if he is still alive.
His two sons and one daughter had to quit school. Kamla Rani worked as a maid and brought up the children. But the damage had been done. The family is struggling. Kamla Rani can't even afford the train fare to go to Delhi to fight the battle.
“I want to know everything. We have fought with the government for 30 years. Now, there is no money to fight. I want compensation,” she said.
In the nights, his screams reverberates in her mind.
“He was physically and mentally tortured. We got him out on bail after a few years but by then he had broken down,” she said. “This is scar that we carry. For fourteen months I didn't know where he was. Then I found out. When I went to meet him, he was a different man. His bones had been broken.”
It was like being in a labyrinth. Hopes were crushed, but names were elicited. More entered the dungeons, and broken down by torture, they took even more names.
Then they all testified against each other, those they hadn't seen or met in some cases. But in the courts, they came prepared. They pointed out to the men in the docks and said they had taken them across the border.
Those who sat in judgment in the army courts scribbled sentences and assigned them prison terms.
Major N R Ajwani, the deputy adjutant judge advocate-general at the Northern Command, who sentenced Banarsi Lal to 14 years imprisonment after Sarwan Dass implicated him, was later arrested by the MI after he was named by Major AK Rana, who in turn was named by Captain RS Rathour, a bright official in the 168 Brigade in Samba. Rathour later wrote a book “Price of Loyalty” about the cases that were built on torture and his own ordeal and fall from grace while he was in Tihar serving his sentence of 14 years. He was arrested in 1978 after Aya Singh implicated him.
Banarasi Lal is a sad man.
It is in his deep, sunken eyes, that the story reveals itself. Banarsi Lal was arrested in 1977.
He had joined the armed forces in 1969 when he was in school. He had gone to the city with a friend who wanted to undergo the test for the army. While standing at the gates, he was spotted by an officer who asked him if he wanted to join and he said he'd rather study. But the officer insisted and he went through the test and other formalities and became a gunner.
“I was in the 217 Medium regiment,” he said. “I came to Samba in 1974 and was posted in Akhnoor.”
Sarwan and he were in the same unit. He had known Dass as a colleague only.
On Thursday, he met Sarwan Dass after almost 35 years. As the two men faced each other in Chakra, Banarasi Lal looked angry. He wanted to get away. Here was the man who he sourced all his suffering to.
"Forget what happened. It is the system," Dass said. "Come over to my house and we can talk. It was all our fate. This was pre-destined."
Banarasi Lal smiled and refused the offer. He sat in the car, and looked ahead.
"I don't want to talk to him. He is the man who started it all. He was never jailed for espionage. But we all became what they call us - spies."
When he was named and subsequently produced in the GCM with Major Ajwani as one of the presiding judges, he had refused to admit to crossing the border because it was a lie.
“Major Ajwani told me to admit so I could get a lesser sentence. There was no other way out. I refused. I got 14 years of jail,” he said. “They tortured me a lot. We still can't face people. It is a shame I carry everywhere.”
The ghosts of the past haven't left him. His children, who have grown up now, know about his case. They don't ask him. His wife never broaches the subject either.
Outside the Samba military headquarters, Banarasi Lal shook hands with another fauji. But he quickly stepped back. He didn't want to be carried away and say he once worked for the army, too.
It would initiate a slew of questions. Which brigade? When did you retire? Do you get pension?
“I want to walk as a free man. I once worked for the army too,” he said. “My identity is ambiguous. It is only a name with no past, no future.”
Banarasi Lal works odd jobs and lives in his native village near Bishna in Jammu.
Their regard for the army and what it does hasn't been tinkered by their own suffereing.
“We have to die in any case. But we wanted to die as soldiers and in combat,” Satpal Singh said. “We never hated the army. If at all, it provided us a purpose in life. When I joined in 1969, I was full of ambition. I wanted to serve my country. After a while, I came to terms with Milkhi Ram. He was suffering, too. Now, we fight together to get what is lost. Our honour.”
Samba is a sleepy town in Jammu. Recently, it was converted into a district. Through the day, the military convoys roll down its narrow roads. On either side of the road that leads to Ludhiana, there are army quarters.
Inside the Samba military headquarters where the 168 brigade is still stationed, it is a strange, unreal world.
“The rules of your world don't work here,” the man, who escorted us inside, said. “To asses the levels of this establishment is like measuring the sea's depth. Impossible.”
Thirty-five years later, the ghosts of the Samba spy scandal still haunt the 168 Infantry Brigade headquarters.
As he stubbed his cigarette, an army officer said he knew about the case but he wouldn't say anything further.
The Samba spy case as it came to be known as later started with the arrest of one Captain SR Nagial who was implicated by Aya Singh in 1976. Nagial is still fighting the case to get his name cleared. In the intervening years, he suffered what came his way. Any mention of the case and his name could still jeopardize what he so painstakingly built, he said.
But it was only in 1978 with the arrest of Captain RS Rathour that the connection with Samba was forged. Most of the hoax case victims belonged to the Samba brigade. The two spies also hailed from Samba district.
In the 1978 sweep and what followed later, the many jawans and majors were sentenced.
“It was done for getting rewards,” Major Ajwani, who lives in Mumbai, said. He was arrested in January 1979 after Major AK Rana named him. He served term for around a year and was later released because there wasn't much evidence against him.
It was Major Ajwani who later asked the Supreme Court to intervene and ask the Delhi high Court to pronounce its judgment on the case.
In 2001, Sarwan Dass had confessed in the Mumbai's magistrate court that he had named innocent people because he was forced to do so. He accused four MI officers—Brigadier T.S. Grewal, who was then MI deputy director, Brigadier (retd) S.C. Jolly, who was then a major, Captain Sudhir Talwar, and Colonel V.P. Gupta.
“I had given a statement. I had gone to Supreme Court in Delhi around a year ago. I was asked if his confessions were my own. I said yes and I left,” he said. “I don't know what happened to it.”
In 1977, Sarwan started naming people. He named gunners Banarasi Lal, Babu Ram and Sriram, Naib Subedar Daulat Ram and his battery commander Captain R.G. Ghalawat, who was his commanding major in Babina. Ghalawat later died of heart attack. The others still fighting the case say he was depressed. The tag of being a spy was something he couldn't deal with.
Rathaur, during his interrogation, named 11 Army personnel. The list included Captain A.K. Rana, Brigadier Karam Chand, Lt Col Kayastha, Major S.P. Sharma, Captain V.K. Dewan, Captain Sujjan Singh. Rana named 27 others from the 168 Infantry Brigade. He was jailed for 10 years.
It became a vicious cycle. Even Havildar Ram Swaroop's death in 1978, three days after he was taken into custody, didn't prevent the MI from spreading its tentacles to those it wanted to settle scores with.
Rathour, who now runs a security agency and lives in Gurgaon, said life was tough. When he walked out of the jail, he didn't have the bus fare to come back home. He spent years in a slum in Paharganj where his wife struggled to provide for the family.
“It was a nightmarish experience,” he said. “I built this from scratch. But the scars don't go away.”
Retired Brigadier SC Jolly, who now lives in Noida, and has been named as one of the perpetrators of the spy scandal, said he didn't want to comment on the case.
After years of fighting court battles, at first in Delhi High Court, and now in Supreme Court, the victims have now found some hope.
Last month, a damning piece of evidence emerged. The postmortem report of Havildar Ram Swaroop, who died in custody in 1978, was traced to the Aruna Asaf Ali government hospital in Delhi where the autopsy was carried out. For years, the army had maintained it had not tortured Ram Swaroop and he died of drug overdose but in the postmortem signed by Dr. B Singh, it states that he died of 39 injuries, including burn injuries.
He was declared dead at the base hospital in the wee hours of the morning of September 30, 1978.
Ram Swaroop was being interrogated at the interrogation centre near Naraina in Delhi and his body was found on the road.
Swaroop, who was 40 at the time and belongs to Udaka village in Haryana, was the only accused to have died in the scandal. The havaldar was posted in Samba in the 527 I&FS Company under the 168 Infantry Brigade. He was an intelligence havaldar and worked under Rathour. Once while he was posted in the field unit at Red Fort in Delhi, Rathour came to meet him, while he was under the radar of the Army.
Prime Minister Morarji Desai had wanted a probe into the death of Ram Swaroop but he was told by the Army that Swaroop was a spy.
Postmortem reports were never produced in the court like other documents that the victims are still asking for, documents that could prove their involvement in the espionage racket if indeed there were any as the Army maintained.
The Army has all along refused to produce this postmortem, dated October 1, 1978, in court. Swaroop died three days after being taken into custody by Military Intelligence (MI) for interrogation.
The fresh evidence has now been attached to their court petitions by the officers, including Capt. RS Rathaur, who was implicated by Aya Singh, still fighting to clear their names in the spy case and declared “innocent.”
Even Swaroop’s widow Anguri Devi is also planning to file a fresh appeal to reopen the case files of her husband’s death on the basis of the new evidence. She had filed a case in the Delhi High Court in 1996 but it was dismissed in 2001 for lack of evidence. Now, armed with the report, she has hopes of vindicating her husband's honour.
In 2000, judges K Ramamoorthy and Devinder Gupta of the Delhi High Court called the Samba spy case “a gross miscarriage of justice”. But in 2006, however, a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arajit Pasayat set aside the 2000 order of the Delhi High Court, and sought a re-examination of the case. But in 2007, the Delhi High court duly dismissed the cases of the two petitioners.
However, because the army has gone in appeal in the Supreme Court, the seven officers whose court martials were struck down by the Delhi High Court are still fighting their cases. They want to be declared “innocent.”
Same with the others. They are still hoping against hope that this may turn the case around and they'd be able to cleanse themselves of the tag of being spies and betraying their own country.
“You can see the marks on all of us. We can't hide the shame. It was forced on us,” Milkhi Ram said. “If not in this life, then maybe even after my death, I would want justice to be done. We would be free then.”
The spy
So many years later, his matchbox that he took out of his pocket still had a woman's picture on it. Only this time, it had “Made in India” written on it.
Sarwan Dass, the self-confessed Pakistani spy who implicated many men in his brigade after he was caught by IB and handed over to the army, once brought back a similar matchbox from across the border. It had a Pakisani model's picture on it. He loved them. The women on the other side were more beautiful, healthier and they were frank in matters of love, he said.
Money could buy him so much in the other world that he saw was struggling with poverty. Women were readily available. He was being paid by the Pakistani agents. They even arranged for liquor for him when he visited. In return for information on the army's establishment, they pampered him. He had dinner in the bungalows. They called for fish kababs and he loved his drinks.
He loved the luxuries of his spy life, its flamboyance and its promise. Everything was within reach.
As he lit his bidi in his house in Chakra village in Jammu where he now lives with his wife Lajwanti, he remembered those heady days.
Of course, it wasn't these cheap bidis that he used to smoke. He smoked those filter cigarettes.
When they came to arrest him, the Subedar Major sighted the 20-pack Wills brand cigarette pack in his trunk in Babina, Jhansi where he was then posted as a gunner for the army.
The official stared at the expensive cigarette box for a long time before admonishing the guards that accompanied him that they should look out for such sings.
With his salary in the army, Sarwan Dass couldn't have afforded those filter cigarettes.
That gave him away. His flamboyance, his love for a good life that his two acres in his village and his paycheck in the army would not have got him, was what made him cross the border.
They said in his village that if you crossed over to the other side of the border, you could strike gold.
That evening when he left home, and walked towards the border near his village, he had made up his mind. He was going to cross over.
It was a rainy evening in 1972. Dass walked through the fields. The fields stretched into eternity. On both sides, they looked the same.
In a wink, he was on enemy's terrain.
“It was a nasha. I didn't think it through. I just crossed,” he said. “In those days, there were no fences. You could just keep walking and in a few moments, you would be there. Besides, I was angry with our army, with the way they promoted people or assigned designations.”
He walked through the night and in the morning, he boarded a bus and got off at Sialkot in the afternoon. When they asked for the fare, he lied he had lost his money.
Hungry and dejected, Dass slept at the bus stop. In the night, policemen woke him up and asked him to produce identity. He kept quiet. They searched him, found his identity card that said he worked for the army and took him to the police station.
“After two days, I was sent to the Sialkot Gora Jail,” Dass said, his face twitching in memory of those grim days. “You just can't make out if it is day or night in that prison. There are small cells. Insects are crawling inside. It is filthy and in the middle of those cells, they have placed iron beds. It was dreary and cold.”
There, he saw a lot of Indians. They were tortured, and roamed around half-naked with scars visible on their bodies.
“I was scared,” Dass said. “Then, the Pakistani FIU came to me. They beat me up endlessly. I thought I should give in their demands. They wanted me to return and bring back information. They said they would reward me for my services.”
He was then dropped off at the border and he crossed over again. They had given him around Rs. 200. During that time, Dass was on holiday.
He crossed the border again after two weeks as he had been told.
“I gave the information on the units and was paid in return,” he said. “Between 1972 and 1975, I went to Pakistan a total of 10 times.”
They wanted him to recruit more people. That's how Aya Singh became a spy, too. They worked for Army's Field Intelligence Unit officer Major Akbar Khan.
The duo met in Babina in Jhansi where they were in the same unit and became friends. Dass saw Aya Singh, who belonged from a Jammu village, was also an ambitious man like him.
They came back together and one night in March 1973, they crossed over to the other side together. A car came to pick them up and thus Aya Singh became part of the spy network.
“We both didn't go back to the unit for six months,” Dass said. “Then we decided to go back to the unit. We were tried for desertion and sent to serve term in Secunderabad. Then, we went back to the unit.”
However, in 1975, the IB trapped Sarwan using a double agent. The agent produced a letter to the interrogation officials written by Sarwan.
Within a week, Dass was arrested.
But the arrest also led to MI's humiliation where its intra-system rival, the IB, had exposed a Pakistani agent working in their establishment.
Then started a chain of trials and confessions and court martials, triggered by MI's embarrassment in the face of the IB's discovery, and propelled by the inhuman torture.
It all led to the arrest of over 60 Army personnel of the 168 Infantry Brigade and its subordinate units in the Samba sector in Jammu.
Aya Singh and Sarwan Dass were interrogated and confronted. They took each other's name. On way to Jammu, Sarwan Dass jumped off the train near Jalandhar after duping the guards. He had latched the doors of the first class compartment they were travelling in from the outside.
He took a bus to his village, sat next to a woman and started off a conversation anticipating checking by officials once the news of his escape spread.
He finally reached his house, and met his wife Lajwanti and mother. A man came to take him away but he fought him off. It wasn't safe anymore.
He crossed over again. And this time, he stayed in Pakistan for around seven months.
“They had given me a quarter. They asked me to marry again but I resisted because even in the Koran that the maulvi taught me because Major Khan wanted me to understand Islam, it was written that I couldn't marry unless I divorced or had valid reasons.”
He used to cross over to his side for a few hours in the night to meet his mother and wife but never stayed. One night, Lajwanti pleaded to him to surrender. It was arranged. Dass surrendered at another village, in Mukhiya Booti Singh's house to the IB.
That was in 1975. He was given over to the army, tortured and coerced to take names.
“I had said punish me. I have committed wrong. But they didn't listen to me,” he said. “Aya Singh told me to keep lying. That was the only way out. He took this major's name. He was his relative. He was the first man to be jailed. I spent three years in prison. We had struck a deal with the MI officers. They told me to say Major AK Rana and Captain RS Rathour had come to Kandral to meet Major Khan. They were so obsessed they forgot that Kandral is a village in India and it is where the Kandral post is. The border is one-and-a-half kilometers away from Kandral post in Jammu. In 1974, if I was in Pakistan, how could I be in Kandral.”
After all this, Sarwan Dass rejoined the army. He was only tried for desertion and not for espionage. Aya Singh suffered a brutal fate. He was shot dead by the army at the border in 1986.
Now, the once flamboyant spy, barely makes ends meet. He cultivates vegetables and rice.
His wife, who waited it out for him, came to terms with her fate long ago.
“I had to spend my days in this world. I refused to remarry. His wedding gift to me was a lonely life. Much of it has passed,” Lajwanti said.
Even now, the taste of the filter cigarette lingers in his mouth. It is one of those leftovers from memory.
When we offered him a Marlboro, he lit it and took a deep drag.
“See, this is what the spy life gave me. Now, I can only afford bidis,” he said. “I regret what I did but they are the culprits, too. They should be booked and charged.”
The villagers have boycotted the family. Their relatives, brothers and other kin, don't entertain them. They haven't for ages.
“It is a difficult life but what can I do,” he said. “I was discharged from the army without pension.”
The one thing that breaks his defiance is the mention of Havildar Ram Swaroop who died in custody, tortured by the army as per the postmortem report that was recently recovered from a Delhi hospital.
“They tortured him so much. They asked him who he had met and he said 'you.' they asked what did they give him. He said 'you gave me whatever you gave me'. He wouldn't give in. They beat him till his eyes popped out,” Dass said. “I was there. If they call me to the court, I will testify. I will tell where they killed him and how.”
Maybe that would be the salvation he has been chasing all these years.
“I did wrong but I am willing to do right, too,” he said as he lit another of his bidis.
The matchbox with its model was on the side. Even now, the man has held on to the tidbits of his other life. It wasn't the same, but at least it was similar. Memories don't require much to come back. Because they are always on hold, ready to be retrieved. All he has now is the glory and the shame of his spy life – the former in its luxuries, the latter in its repercussions.
The Case
* Aya Singh and Sarwan Dass were arrested on the information of IB in
mid 1975 for spying against India for Pakistan. They were arrested
from Jhansi where they were posted.
* They were brought to Jammu at the joint interrogation centre
separately and Sarwan Dass escaped en route and went to Pakistan.
* Aya Singh was brought to Jammu JIC and later handed over to the army
for trial.
* In 1976, Sarwan Dass was arrested again. Dass claims he surrendered
but police claims they apprehended him. He was interrogated at the
JIC. While at JIC in Jammu, both named each other.
* They were kept in the MI custody and there, they started naming
people. Those who were named by them were arrested, tortured and it
went on.Trials went on and more arrests continued to be made.
* Captain Sewaram Nagial was arrested in 1976 and charged for crossing
the border.
* Aya Singh was made to name Captain RS Rathour.
* Together they duo implicated around 18 officials before Captain RS
Rathour, who was sentenced to 14 years. Around 50 officials lost their
designations, were court martialed and were sentenced.
* More arrests were made on the basis of confessions.
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