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.