by RVS Mani
In order to strengthen and augment the intelligence machinery action has already been taken by way of sanctioning additional posts, and steps are being taken to fill the vacancies in an expeditious manner. This will also enable strengthening of the institutional mechanisms for gathering, analysis and sharing of intelligence and operational coordination among the agencies and the States.
(iii) Further action has been taken to strengthen the Special Branches/ Intelligence Agencies in the States/UTs by providing assistance under the Scheme for Modernisation of State Police Forces (also refer Para 7) and 5% of funding under the Scheme has been earmarked for this purpose. In recognition of the urgent need for strengthening the State Special Branches it has been decided to have a separate Sub-Scheme for this purpose, the detailed parameters of which are being finalized.
(iv) Steps have also been initiated to strengthen the State Special Branches, a draft scheme in respect of which has already been circulated to States. In addition, connectivity between the Multi-Agency Centre and the State Special Branches through State Intelligence Bureau is being strengthened by way of dedicated and secure connections and data centres.
Presidential Assent
The Bills were passed in both Houses of Parliament and the exercise with the Parliament concluded by 20th December 2008.
Subsequent to passage of the Bills by Parliament, an elaborate exercise was conducted jointly by the piloting ministry (MHA) and the Law Ministry. After the passage of Bills and authentication from the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the Bills were received in the Law Ministry on 23rd or 24th of December 2008.
For any Bill, these steps are a must. At the first stage, the Law Ministry’s Legislative Department makes a tentative draft, and sends the Bill to the piloting Ministry. The Piloting Ministry (MHA in this case) examines the Bill as passed by Parliament and confirms that the public interest objectives and commensurate policy set out at the time of initiating the proposal have been covered in the Bill. After appropriate approvals including that of the Union Minister (Home Minister in this case), this exercise was conducted and completed by the Home Ministry on 26 and 27th December 2008. After all approvals, including the Union Home Minister’s approval, the Bill was sent to Law Minister for obtaining the Presidential Assent. The objectives are appropriately captured in the text of the Bills as passed by Parliament.
On 30.12.2008 in the evening, the Law Ministry told the Joint Secretary (IS) that the Bills were fit for Presidential Assent, and the ministry wanted a last-minute reiteration meeting. The Joint Secretary (IS) and I reached the Law Ministry at about 8.00 pm. The meeting went on up to 9.30 pm. After this, the Law Ministry suggested that I drop the file for Presidential Assent at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. I was to be accompanied by a staffer from the Law Ministry, who was conversant with the work process in the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
I had driven in my own car to the Law Ministry that evening as I had planned to go home directly from Shastri Bhavan. The ministry official, a person called Sharma, also stayed in my neighbourhood and he requested me to drop him at Dwarka Mor after our Rashtrapati Bhavan visit. I readily agreed.
Slapped by a ghost
We reached the Rashtrapati Bhavan at about 10 pm. I was received by Subramaniam, a Section Officer in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. As we shared the name, he was very cordial. After completing the formalities, I and the Law Ministry staffer drove down to Dwarka Mor where I dropped him.
The Joint Secretary (IS) was anxious to ensure no hiccups and called me up at 10.52 pm when I was driving, to confirm that the papers had been dropped at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The anxiety was on account of the fact that the President was in Visakhapatnam or some such place and one of the officers of the President’s Secretariat was to fly down next morning to get her assent for the Bills.
I dropped the Law Ministry staffer at Dwarka Mor T Point and took a U turn to return home. At this point in time, I noticed I was being followed by four bikes. I thought, this was a pre-NY prank. Some kids might be high and just indulging in childish pranks. But, soon, it was clear to me that something more sinister was going on behind me. These four bikes, each had two riders (one rider and one pillion each). And they were persistent in keeping behind, dodging me.
When I reached the Sector 16-B police post (which has since been shifted), I made up my mind to seek their help. It was a new car I was driving. I had bought it on Christmas day. The papers were not ready. I also did not have a Parking Sticker, which itself is a power statement in Delhi. I had thought that in a few days, New Year will dawn and I will get a 2009 sticker.
When I tried to enter the police post, which was a single room post at the entrance, I was stopped by a Delhi police staffer and abused. He said, ‘everyone here is a Home Ministry officer’. The fellows who were chasing me had gone behind the police post, presumably to pretend to urinate. This police staffer asked for my license. When I was trying to retrieve my wallet, the policeman took away some Rs 1,000 and some more notes which were in the wallet. Meanwhile, he continued to abuse me. Typically, Delhi, my readers must be thinking. The situation was getting bad to worse.
In a flash I decided what to do. I seized an opportunity and got into my car and started driving like mad. Since I knew that the men chasing me would not give up and would continue to pursue me, instead of turning left on Road No.201, I went straight towards Sector 12, took a turn left into Sector 4, took another turn at Modern Convent School. From then onward, I took a right turn and reached Lovely Chowk near my apartment. I reached home at about 11.55 pm.
My mother was in our house on that day. She had the habit of waking up, no matter what time I returned. After washing up, when I sat down to eat the dinner my wife had warmed up, my mother came out of her room and, as was the normal practice, came up to serve me some small morsel of some delicacy on the menu, just to satisfy herself, that she had fed her son. In fact, my wife often told her that she would not let Amma’s baby (I am the youngest child) remain hungry. But that day, my mother looked at my face and commented in Tamil, ’Ennadda pei aranjaa madiri irrukka’ (you look like having been slapped by a ghost). A mother surely has a sixth sense about danger to her offspring, whatever be her age.
First thing in the morning, I went and dropped my mother at my sister-in-law’s home to avoid her smelling something untoward. Then I went to office and reported the episode to the department. The sequence of events were reduced to writing. The report was then brought to the notice of the Home Secretary who remarked that this was ‘unacceptable’ and opined that we should write to the Commissioner of Police.
Following the receipt of Presidential assent for the two new Bills, they had to be printed in the form of a Gazette Notification at the Government of India Press. A colleague and close friend, who was a national football referee, in the true spirit of team work agreed to get the notification printed in the Gazette for me by following up with the Government Press at Mayapuri, New Delhi to ensure publication of this Gazette Notification on that very day.
I, meanwhile, had to devote myself to drafting a communication and modifying it quite a few times, so that a report in the form of a letter from the Special Secretary (Internal Security), could be sent to the then Commissioner of Police. This letter from the Special Secretary (Internal Security), to the then Commissioner of Police was sent on 19th of January 2009, detailing the incident as well as calling for a detailed investigation. That is after Kasab’s identity as Pakistani national had been accepted by Pakistan. A serving MHA officer was being intimidated. What if I had been carrying important official papers? I had been transporting such documents, just an hour before being chased by unknown men.
Ministers, some mandarins and the MHA
THE NATIONAL INVESTIGATION Agency Act and Unlawful Activities (prevention) Amendment Act were notified on 1.1.2009, meeting the timeline set by Minister Chidambaram. We were all so engrossed in the work on the new initiatives, little did we realise that we had not been following up on the status of investigation of 26/11 or f
or that matter, any other case.
Meanwhile, reports received from various agencies, including the Mumbai Police and ATS (whatever was left of it), were put together and perused. The first time any written document was received in the Ministry of Home Affairs stating that Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist of Mumbai attack of 26/11, was a Pakistani was on 7 January 2009. Prior to this, the information had all been in the newspapers and television. The reason why I am recalling this information is because this is connected to the attack on me personally just before the New Year.
The new Home Minister had also convened a Chief Minister’s Conference on Internal Security on 6.1.2009 to disseminate to the States the initiatives being taken by the Government of India in the aftermath of 26/11. Generally, a Chief Minister’s Conference on Internal Security is handled by the Internal Security Division of the MHA. But this time, this conference was assigned to the Central State Division. I was sent to Karnataka on some official duty and do not have any insights into the deliberations in the meeting, except that the Prime Minister attended the CMs’ meet.
Chidambaram’s infrastructural initiatives were assigned to different programme Divisions in the MHA—like Coastal policing to Border Management (Coastal Security) Division, Desert and Mega City policing to be handled by the Police Modernisation Division etc.
A great deal of hype was created both within the government and outside, as if the government had launched a direct attack against terrorism. Those reading the finer print, however, knew there was more noise than action. Central intentions did not match State government abilities, Central allocations did not sync with State efforts. Take one small initiative. Boats were provided for patrolling the coast to State governments without they providing the personnel to man these vessels; no specialised training on monitoring the seas was ever envisaged. It was the same with other hyped schemes like the Mega City policing or Desert policing plans.
The much-touted CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System) suffered an inherent implementation design defect, a faulty milestones scheduling. Every agency breached the target date. Yet, I am sure, today it must be a much better system than the ICPA (Integrated Common Police Application), an archaic one which it replaced.
In 2009, even the engagement of Public Prosecutor became a matter of endless discussion and dissent. Many of the IS Division officers had suggested the name of the renowned Mumbai-based criminal lawyer Deepak Salvi, who had been the Public Prosecutor in the 1993 Mumbai blast case. In September 2017, his contribution to justice10 in the 1993 case trial was well acknowledged and placed on record by the judicial officer. Personally, we all knew him as an individual of impeccable integrity. But the NIA team would not have him. NIA officials brought in another name, Rohini Salian. Salian had been with the Central Bureau of Investigation and closely associated with the team of officers who had joined the NIA.
It later transpired that Salian was brough in to help NIA further the narrative of the then government. However, in 2015, Salian went against the CBI position11 when the NIA sought closure in the Malegaon case.
10 On 7 September 2017, a designated TADA court in Mumbai pronounced the quantum of sentence against five gangsters – Abu Salem, Mustafa Dossa, Mohammed Dossa, Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan and Karimullah Sheikh. A death sentence was handed out to two and life sentences to the other three convicts in the attack that killed 257 persons and injured more than 700 in a serial bomb blast in the city in 1993.
‘All the seven accused tried to thwart my attempts to bring them to book. They kept filing new applications every day. It was very challenging’, Special Counsel D N Salvi told News18.
11 In the summer of 2015, the NIA denied her statement to The Indian Express that Salian had been asked to go ‘soft’ on the 2008 Malegaon blast case. Special public prosecutor Rohini Salian said she had given her statement a lot of thought. Salian also disclosed that she wanted to seek discharge of nine Muslims, arrested and chargesheeted by the Maharashtra ATS and CBI for a 2006 blast in Malegaon. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/nia-asking-salian-to-go-softi-am-a-criminal-lawyer-not-stupid-to-say-this-without-proof/. All UAPA offences at the time of chargesheet Under Section 45, need government sanction. Which means that chargesheet has to be vetted and approved by Government of India which functionally makes NIA a caged parrot. If the new government has reviewed the sanction including the evidences brought out, such situations are bound to arise.
The National Investigation Agency
After the two Acts were notified, began the work of establishing an organisational structure for the National Investigation Agency. One of my many duties was to oversee the NIA formation. The first round of discussions on the structure of the NIA, naturally dealt with the procedure to be followed for appointment of a Director General for the NIA.
I had suggested that as per the laid-down procedure for such appointments, a search committee should be constituted. Once the search committee recommends the names of officers, the Home Minister could choose his man from the shortlist. Once the Minister made his preference known, we could obtain the required approvals for the appointing authority, which in this case, would be the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC).
There was disagreement on the procedure as laid down. The only issue was whether the DG appointment should be done by the Internal Security Division or the Police-I (IPS) Division which deals with appointments/ deployment and other cadrecontrolling issues of the Indian Police Service. This question arose because the Act had provided that the DG of NIA shall be of the rank of Director General or Addl Director General of Police of a State government. Hence, the natural corollary was that a police officer would be appointed which was the domain of the Police-I Division.
In the third week of January, when the two respective Joint Secretaries were in the process of resolving the matter, came a surprise. We were told that a Director General for the National Investigating Agency had already been appointed.
The Internal Security Division had no clue to how and when this appointment was processed. Minister Chidambaram had hand-picked the man and had taken the ACC on board to appoint R V Raju (since deceased) as the DG, NIA. Raju was from the Jammu & Kashmir cadre of the IPS of the rank of Additional Director General of Police.
As the appointment was already made, though IS did not know about it, we started taking appropriate steps to issue the relevant orders relating to his conditions of service as per laiddown procedure. What was the procedure followed and how he was appointed was not known to the Internal Security Division. I can recall my counterpart from the Police Division asking me about the procedures followed for this appointment, once the media announced his name. We had to tell the Police Division, we did not know any details and this came as a surprise to the Police.
Needless to say, the two Joint Secretaries of both Divisions had been kept in the dark and did not like the way their domain had been breached by an overbearing Union Minister who had literally belittled their position, besides bringing to nought all the preparatory work the IS and Police Division had done on this count and spent considerable time and effort in this.
In order to understand the dynamics in these corridors of power, one has to appreciate and understand the intrinsic relationships that exist in such powerful ministries like the Ministry of Home Affairs.
This new Director General had been a direct choice of the Home Minister, who was overbearing, all-pervading, all-powerful with an illusory sense of having monopoly over wisdom. In the ministry he had established an aura of invincibility and integrity, so much so that , it is a matter of record that in a testament before a judge in the case of Ravi Dhiren Ghosh v/s NIA (relating to the trial of a man in a case of Fake Indian Currency in which I was called as a witness), I had issued the prosecution sanction and made a submission that the prosecution was approved by the then Home Minister, who is an eminent lawyer in his own right. In fact, the NIA got a conviction in the case, that can be corroborated from the or
der of the Special NIA Court which awarded verdict in this case in January 2014.12