R N Kao

by Nitin A Gokhale

  RNK had great love for animals. Very early in his police career, RNK had developed a love for horses. Dogs were always a part of the household. Later in life, when all the pet dogs died one after the other, RNK would make sure stray dogs in the locality were fed and sheltered properly. Achala remembers, ‘If it was raining and RNK noticed a stray trying to find shelter, he would tell the domestic help, “woh phatak ko khol doh, unhe andar rahne doh”’ (Open the gate. Let them stay inside.)

  ‘He was, of course, very protective about me and he was very discreet about keeping a watch on me. Every morning, he would gently and casually ask, ‘So what’s your programme?’ I didn’t realise back then, but there was always someone around discreetly keeping an eye on me. I remember, once I had gone to watch a movie in the old Odeon theatre with a friend when electricity failed. There were a very few people in the hall. We were waiting for the lights to come back when a man came and said, “Madam, yeh Bijli aane mein do-tin ghante lag jayenge. Aap chale jayiye.” (It will take two–three hours for electricity to be restored. You should better leave.) Much later, I realised that he must have been the minder sent by Daddy,’ Achala recalls.

  As the Kao brothers got on in age, Anil Kaul, a corporate professional who worked in Mumbai, decided to shift with them in Delhi. There, during RNK’s later years, Anil experienced the awe in which RNK was held.

  ‘After Mr Kao’s demise, once I was out for my usual walk in Vasant Vihar when an elderly gentleman taking a stroll with his wife stopped me and asked, “Are you Kao’s son-in-law?” When I nodded yes, he remarked, “What a man! What achievements. Faristha tha.” (He was an angel.) The gentleman just wouldn’t stop praising Mr Kao. Just then, his wife butted in and addressing me she said, “Do you know, even my husband was a Governor?” The moment she said that, the old man flared up and said, “Kya baat karti ho! Kahan Kao Sahib, kahan mein!” (What are you saying? Look at Kao Sahib’s stature and look at mine!) On another occasion, I was passing by the Senior Citizens Club in our locality when an elderly man stopped me and after confirming I was Mr Kao’s son-in-law, broke down, resting his head on my chest and sobbing away. I didn’t know how to react. I just stood there, dumbfounded. That is the kind of respect and veneration he commanded,’ Anil Kaul said.

  There are many other happier memories Kaul has about RNK—the avuncular patriarch of the house—such as the way he treated the domestic help, the subordinate staff and even strangers who asked for assistance.

  Once, on a flight from Bombay to Delhi, Kaul had spotted Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw. He went up to him and introduced himself as RNK’s son-in-law. Sam, as Mankeshaw was generally known, broke into a genuine smile and exclaimed, ‘Ramji, my good friend! How is he? Son-in-law, uh? Sit, sit. Tell me, how’s Malini? How are they keeping?’ Manekshaw was beside himself just at the mention RNK’s name. ‘For the next 15 minutes, he made me sit next to him and chatted about their times together,’ Kaul remembers. Sam and RNK, besides others, were the pivotal figures in India’s 1971 campaign to liberate East Pakistan. They not only had genuine professional partnership but had developed a close personal bond as well.

  On another occasion, Kaul accompanied RNK to a big function to honour the Dalai Lama. It was organised at the convention centre of The Ashok Hotel in Delhi. More than 1,500 people attended the event. As was his wont, RNK had preferred to sit many rows away from the front in an aisle seat. As the Dalai Lama arrived, everyone in the hall stood up. As he made his way to the stage, the Dalai Lama was responding to greetings from people on either side of the passage, when he suddenly spotted RNK. ‘The moment he recognised Mr Kao, the Dalai Lama’s face broke into a big, broad smile. He stopped, clasped Mr Kao’s hands with both of his hands and said, “Kao! How are you, my friend?” The Dalai Lama was beside himself with sheer joy. Mr Kao, on the other hand, was embarrassed by the public recognition. Fortunately, the organisers gently took the Dalai Lama forward,’ Kaul remembers vividly.

  Even foreign interlocutors had only words of praise for RNK. B. Raman, another former R&AW officer, quotes a French spy Chief, Count Alexandre de Marenches, who included RNK as one of the five great intelligence chiefs of the 1970s. De Marenches had remarked, ‘What a fascinating mix of physical and mental elegance! What accomplishments! What friendships! And yet, so shy of talking about himself, his accomplishments and his friends.’

  It was this loyalty, a sense of purpose and innate shyness that prevented RNK from writing his memoirs or give interviews. Despite being active till the end, for 18 years after giving up his formal positions in the government, RNK did not speak at any public function, refrained from interacting with the media or write his autobiography. And, he had so much to share and reveal! After all, here was a man who played a major part in helping the Bengalis of East Pakistan create a new nation, secured the merger of Sikkim into the Indian dominion and build the R&AW into a formidable outfit, comparable to the best in the world. In this context, one incident comes easily to mind.

  In 1996, several functions were held in Delhi to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the birth of Bangladesh, which was attended by many who were associated with it in one way or the other. At one such meeting, a Bangladeshi citizen, familiar with Delhi’s who’s who, noticed a handsome, impeccably dressed man sitting at the back of the room, as if trying to make himself inconspicuous. The Bangladeshi realised it was RNK. So, he went up to him and said, ‘Sir you should have been sitting at the centre of the dais. You are the man who made 1971 possible.’ Embarrassed at being spotted, RNK replied, ‘I did nothing. They deserve all the praise.’ After that, he quietly left the hall.

  Many others have similar stories about his simplicity, his obsession with keeping a low profile and polite behaviour even at the peak of his power and influence. Vappala Balachandran, an IPS officer of 1959 batch, who joined the R&AW in 1976 after spending 17 years in Maharashtra Police, worked closely with RNK in his post-1977 years. After his retirement in 1996, Balachandran has been a prolific commentator on national security affairs. Speaking to me at his elegant flat in Mumbai, Bala, now in his early eighties, recalls an incident at an IB conference in December 1975. In August of that year, Bangladesh’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and nearly 40 members of his family were massacred by disgruntled Bangladeshi Army officials, sending shock waves across the subcontinent. There were also whispers about the R&AW’s failure to prevent the carnage. Middle-level police officials from all states in the country were attending the DIG-CID conference in Delhi. RNK was one of the speakers in the three-day meeting. After RNK’s opening remarks, a DIG from Madhya Pradesh, perhaps wanting to confirm the alleged failure of R&AW in not being able to save Mujibur Rahman, asked, what seemed an impertinent question to the audience. As Balachandran remembers, ‘DIG Qureshi from MP asked a particularly loaded question as to why our external intelligence was caught napping about the Bangladesh coup. As we all squirmed in our seats at the expected explosion from RNK, who was at the peak of his power and influence, all that he was willing to say in his inimitable style was, “I can assure you that we were not surprised at the developments.” There was no attempt to browbeat the questioner on the basis of his seniority or to show off his foreknowledge—instead a factual understatement was provided, which was the hallmark of the traditionalist, British-trained spy Chief.’

  Vikram Sood, amongst the first to join R&AW from allied services (he came from the Indian Postal Service), and who rose to become one of its most respected Chiefs in the early 2000s, remembers RNK to be suave, extremely polite and very stylish right after his first encounter with the legend. ‘After I was told by my service that I have been shortlisted to be deputed to a new organisation (in those days, no one spoke of the R&AW, as it was all very secretive), I was interviewed by Mr Sankaran Nair followed by Mr Kao. Even after all these years, I remember being dumbfounded in Mr Kao’s presence, although the interaction was brief. He was not looking for knowledge or cunningness from me. There were no tricky questions either. A
ll that Mr Kao and Mr Nair were doing was to size me up. Of course, they asked me if I was prepared to spend my life in this organisation. That was easy. I had no intention to spend the rest of my career in the postal service.’

  Sood, who has recently authored an important book on the art and craft of intelligence, and is now something of an elder statesman for the outfit, says, ‘RNK inculcated a habit for precision and meticulousness in our functioning. We could not make a mistake in our report. We could not be anything but be meticulous in our reporting. Each word had to be weighed. Sometimes, your report would come back marked with a tick and a remark, ‘off’. Aap raat bhar sochte rah jaate, kaise miss ho gaya. (You would think the entire night, how did you miss that.) That is the kind of precision he wanted in your communication; he led by example. He did not shout even if he wanted to be stern with someone. He was very particular about conducting meetings. RNK did not like anyone speaking out of turn or anyone interrupting when a conversation was on.’

  Sood says that he will remember his last meeting with RNK forever. ‘We used to have an annual get together where serving and retired officers used to come together for an evening. That particular day in 2001, I got delayed in official meetings since there was an alarm—false as it turned out—about terrorists having entered the Doordarshan headquarters. As I reached the headquarters, almost 90 minutes late, Mr Kao spotted me. “Okay good, now that you have come, I can go.” Embarrassed, I said, “You could have left any time, Sir.” “How can I go before the Chief has come?” Kao remarked. That was the last I saw him. I still have a picture, a rarity, from that meeting,’ Sood reminiscences as he looks back at the remarkable man who shaped R&AW’s destiny.

  That was quintessential Kao. A private man, who shunned the limelight, hated to be photographed and preferred to work behind the scenes, even in his personal life.

  1 K. Sankaran Nair, Inside IB and RAW: The Rolling Stone that Gathered Moss (New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2019).

  FOUR

  The Kashmir Princess Investigation

  April 1955 was considered to be a turning point in RNK’s career, when he was assigned a case that gave him a big boost and proved to be, in his own words, an ‘important landmark’. The case had international ramifications and took RNK to five different countries and gave him an exposure to different cultures, policing approaches and detective works.

  This was his first major assignment abroad—one on which RNK spent 6 months abroad. It presented him the opportunity of seeing new lands and meeting a number of foreign dignitaries, the most distinguished of whom was Zhao Enlai (Chou en-Lai, as spelt in those years), the Chinese Premier. RNK’s duty took him to Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and China. In his own words, ‘This was my first exposure to South East Asia, which, by all accounts, is a fascinating world in itself. It is so close to us, yet about which general knowledge in India is poor.’1

  The investigation was about the crash of an Air India aircraft named Kashmir Princess.

  There is a back story to the entire incident. Prime Minister Nehru had conceived an Afro-Asia conference to be hosted in Indonesia at Bandung. It was scheduled to be held between 18 and 24 April 1955. The Air India International Super Constellation plane was chartered by the Chinese Government to carry its delegates for the inaugural conference, along with the Premier. Zhou Enlai’s adversaries, looking for an opportunity to assassinate him, planted a bomb on the plane during its halt at Hong Kong. The plane crashed in South China Sea (see Chapter 2). RNK was deputed to represent India in the subsequent investigations.

  According to RNK—he put in his own effort at piecing together the sequence of events—the plane took off with 8 crew members and 11 passengers from Hong Kong for Jakarta. About 5 hours after take-off, a muffled explosion was heard. At that time, the aeroplane was flying at about 18,000 feet over the sea. Soon after the explosion, smoke started entering the cabin and fire was detected in the starboard rig behind the third engine. The captain of the aircraft, Captain Jatar, decided to ditch the aeroplane and for this, the prescribed drill was quickly and methodically carried out. The descent was rapid, and its final stage was carried out under extremely difficult circumstances.

  The aeroplane fell into the sea, with the starboard hitting the water first and the nose sinking almost immediately. The aircraft was burned and destroyed as a result of the impact and out of the passengers and crew members, only three crew members survived. The survivors were flight navigator Pathak, aircraft mechanical engineer Karnik and co-pilot Dixit. The captain of the aircraft, Captain Jatar, who was one of the most experienced pilots of Air India international, died in his seat and, in fact, when the salvage operations took place later, his body was found in the captain’s seat. The very first accounts received also confirmed that the airhostess, Miss Glori Asponson, had acted most heroically. She maintained her calm in that extremely trying conditions and, as was later confirmed after examining the dead body that was recovered, she issued lifebelts to every single passenger as well as member of the crew, before the aircraft actually hit the water.

  It was clear, almost from the very beginning, that the aircraft, Kashmir Princess, had been the victim of sabotage. This incident assumed great importance as a number of countries were involved. The aircraft was Indian, but the passengers were all Chinese. It had taken off from Hong Kong and had crashed in Indonesian waters.

  The Government of India was not only directly concerned with this case, because the aircraft was Indian, but also because at that time, in 1955, the British did not have any regular diplomatic connection with the Chinese. In keeping with these circumstances, the Government of India designated a big team from the Civil Aviation Department to be associated with all aspects of the investigation. K.M. Raha, who was then the Deputy Director General of the Civil Aviation Department, headed the team. His advisers were Col A.K. Mitra, who was India’s military attaché in Jakarta at that time, and Y.R. Malhotra, Chief Inspector of Accidents, Civil Aviation Department in the Government of India.

  Almost immediately after the accident, Chinese radio announced that the Chinese Government had information that the Kashmir Princess had been the victim of sabotage. The Chinese blamed KMT (Kaumingtang, Taiwanese Government) agents for the crime. In view of these implications, it was decided, with the approval of Prime Minister Nehru, that apart from the team sent by the Civil Aviation Department, an intelligence officer from India should be deputed to be associated with the investigation by the intelligence authorities concerned.

  RNK was handpicked by the Director of Intelligence Bureau (DIB), Bhola Nath Mullik, for the crucial assignment. ‘Later I understood that the Prime Minister had informed the British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, of my nomination. It was considered necessary because it was rightly believed that the main burden of the inquiry would have to be handled by the Hong Kong Police and if I were to play any useful role, I would have to work in very close liaison with them. Having got the necessary clearance from all the authorities concerned, I was given green signal by Shri Mullik and asked to proceed to Bombay on the first lap of my journey. Accordingly, I left Delhi on 20 April 1955 by air for Bombay,’ Kao noted.

  RNK had chosen Chandra Pal Singh, a deputy central intelligence officer, to accompany him because he had full trust in his ‘loyalty and integrity’. Kao knew Chandrapal for a long time. Vishwanathan, an engineer from the Hindustan Aircraft Factory, joined the team in Bombay where RNK interviewed the three survivors of the crash, Air India’s District Manager and Operations Manager in Hong Kong, who were visiting India in connection with the enquiry.

  In his notes left at the NMML, Kao records in 1977, ‘I have not maintained any detailed records of the investigation amongst my personal papers, but from the jottings in my diary and from memory, I recall that in these interviews in Bombay, amongst other things, I gathered the complete list of the flight crew, passengers, leaders, cleaners, etc.. In fact, everyone who had access to the Kashmir Princess in Hong Kong befor
e its flight. The details of the freight, mail and baggage were also similarly gathered by me. Having done this on 22 April in the evening, I left Bombay by air reaching Singapore the following day in the morning.’2 After halting at Singapore airport for a couple of hours and a short meeting with Raha, RNK and his team left for Jakarta en route to Bandung, where the first Afro-Asian conference was about to happen. Many stalwarts from across the two continents had gathered there, including Nehru, Sukarno and Zhou Enlai.

  As he reached Bandung, RNK was directed to the conference hall where the session was on. K.F. Rustomji, then a Deputy Director in the Intelligence Bureau and in-charge of the prime minister’s security detail, immediately took RNK to Prime Minister Nehru. Nehru, at whose insistence RNK was told to join the investigation, had also arranged for RNK to meet the Chinese Premier that very evening. RNK was with Zhou Enlai for over an hour and then retired for the night.

  RNK made an interesting observation during his first meeting with Zhou Enlai. ‘Though he was wearing one of those boiler suits, it was clear that the material was neither ordinary nor was the cut. In spite of the cloth’s colour and rather loose trousers and loose sleeves, all the Chinese leaders at the time sported a look keeping in mind the Mao style. Zhou Enlai was an impressive figure. He had an interpreter all along. He was a Harvard-trained Chinese who spoke English well. Though Mr Zhou Enlai spoke only in Chinese, his knowledge of English was better than he would acknowledge. At this meeting, I was, for the first time, exposed to Chinese green tea and various small eatables like dried lychee and other titbits. What struck me was the formal rectangular arrangement of the sofa and chairs. Opposite to the chairs, there was a table with plenty of ashtrays, with spittoons also provided near each chair. That, I later realised, was a standard Chinese décor.’