During the meeting, Zhou Enlai came quickly to the point and asked RNK to give an up-to-date information about what he had learned from the survivors. Based on what Pathak and Karnik had told him, RNK described the details of the bomb, where it was placed and what effect it had on the plane’s engines that led to the crash. As RNK was explaining the sequence of events, he offered to draw a sketch too and took his fountain pen out.
What happened next can be best described in RNK’s own words. ‘He agreed with this enthusiastically. I took out some paper from my briefcase, which I was carrying, and I had a fountain pen in my pocket. I unscrewed the cap. I did not have much experience of air travel. Before I realised what was happening, I got a lot of ink on my fingers that had leaked out of the fountain pen while flying from Bombay to Singapore, Singapore to Jakarta and Jakarta to Bandung. Hence, I got ink on my fingers and I looked at it and tried to take out some white blank paper from my briefcase to wipe my fingers. Mr Zhou Enlai, without a word, rose from the sofa and left the room. This puzzled me but within a few minutes, he came back accompanied by an attendant who was carrying what looked to me like neatly folded wet towels. As I had never been exposed to Chinese wet towels, I looked at him inquiringly. He motioned that I should wipe my fingers on them. I was most impressed by his courtesy in taking the trouble of getting up, going out of the room and getting those towels for me to wipe my fingers. This was only the first of many polite, generous gestures that Mr Zhou Enlai made during my meetings with him.’ RNK remember Zhou as a man who spoke briefly but to the point. And also, candidly. At one point, he insisted that RNK should not inform the British authorities of anything that was shared with him. Zhou, however, told RNK to proceed to Hong Kong and then visit Canton, where further arrangements would be made for him to meet Zhou.
The Bandung conference, which RNK was coincidentally attending, gave him the first opportunity to observe international meetings, protocols and false egos at work. As he entered the main plenary hall, RNK was taken to Prime Minister Nehru who briefly instructed him and moved on to meet others.
‘This was my first presence at an international meet and I was impressed with the solemnity of the occasion and the gravity which seemed to hang in the air. At that time, China had not widely been accepted as a respectable member of the international comity of nations, and as we (India) were one of the few countries that had established diplomatic relations with China, Prime Minister Nehru had taken upon himself the responsibility of introducing Zhou Enlai on the world scene. Or, at least, so he thought. In later years, I learned that Zhou Enlai had mentioned to some reporter that he had not met anyone as arrogant as Jawaharlal Nehru and in support of his statement, he had said that it was incredibly presumptuous on the part of the Prime Minister of India to have introduced the Prime Minister of China on the world scene. Well, whatever Zhou’s ego might have been, the fact of the matter is Nehru did help China to gain recognition in the international field. In fact, in that process, we (India) earned a lot of odium,’ Kao observed.
RNK also had a couple of other interesting anecdotes to share from his first international conference. ‘I have a distinct recollection that Mr Mohammed Ali of Bogra, who was the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, was also there. He had brought along with him his wife, and as the proceedings started, I realised that Mr Mohammed Ali seemed more intent on teaching his wife how to use a cine camera to cover the proceedings, rather than to take part in it,’ Kao remarked.
He also observed the egoistical behaviour of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, who had hitched a ride on the Indian plane with Prime Minister Nehru to and from Bandung. ‘It was interesting how unconsciously—although, I do not know whether it was unconscious—I got the impression that President Nasser was keen to give the impression that he, as a political figure, was at least as tall as Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru himself being much older than Nasser tended to take him under his wing and brought him along in the aircraft. An interesting point of protocol was that normally when VIPs travel by aircraft, when you arrive at the place, the most important VIP first sets out of the aircraft. Similarly, when you are departing, everyone else is supposed to board earlier than the most important VIP. When they were leaving Jakarta for Bandung, Nehru put his hand around Nasser’s shoulders and encouraged him to board the plane, but he would not do so, because he was keen on going up the stairs at the last. Finally, they decided to go up together,’ Kao noted.
The next day, RNK left for Jakarta after briefing the Indian Prime Minister about the meeting with the Chinese Premier. On 26 April, RNK got involved with Nehru’s security in the Indonesian capital, although he was not part of the security detail. Again, according to RNK’s own notes, he met Nehru, who repeated his detailed instructions about the manner in which RNK should conduct the enquiry at Hong Kong. ‘This was somewhat different from the instructions which Mr Mullik had given to me before I left Delhi. He had said that from Jakarta I should return to Singapore and make my headquarters there. In the light of the revelations made to me by Mr Zhou Enlai and the instructions given by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, I had no alternative but to proceed from Jakarta to Hong Kong as quickly as possible,’ Kao noted.
So Hong Kong it was. After a circuitous journey from Jakarta to Hong Kong via Manila and Brunei—since seats were not available on direct Jakarta-Hong Kong route because of the rush of returning Bandung delegates—Kao and his assistants, Chandrapal Singh and Vishwanathan, reached Hong Kong on 30 April 1955. In between, they had to experience several difficult moments since travelling and logistics was not as advanced as one now sees in the South East Asian countries.
When the Indian team reached Jakarta, they discovered to their horror that tickets on direct flights to Hong Kong were unavailable for weeks. After a lot of effort and some help from the Indian Embassy, the three managed to buy a ticket to Manila from Jakarta on Indonesia’s Garuda Airways. RNK was assured that the three Indians would be put onto a connecting flight to Hong Kong immediately. They did reach Manila in the Philippines—after making an unscheduled stopover at a small airstrip, which RNK later learnt was in Brunei—only to discover that they had no onward connection to Hong Kong! Kao and his team were forced to spend 24 hours in Manila, bereft of any Filipino currency or local support, before catching a flight to Hong Kong the next day.
India’s Commissioner (not High Commissioner) at Hong Kong had arranged for their accommodation at a hotel called Miramar in Kowloon. This hotel became RNK’s permanent address for the next six months as the investigations began in right earnest. As he started to liaise with the Hong Kong Police, Kao realised that he needed to make a trip to mainland China to get more insights. Again, RNK noted that he had a great difficulty in reaching Peking (as Beijing was then known) because of the combination of bad weather and poor connectivity.
On reaching Peking, Kao met Zhou almost immediately. As he had noted in their first meeting, the Chinese Premier came to the point directly. He said the Chinese Government had specific information that the alleged incendiary bomb, given by the United States, came from Taiwan and was placed in the wing of the aircraft by a Koumintang agent. The Chinese even had the names of the people suspected to be involved in the conspiracy. Chou wanted RNK to give this information to the Hong Kong Police, only if the British gave an assurance that they would keep it to themselves and not pass it on to the Americans at this stage.
Chou also told RNK that his (Kao’s) life was in danger in Hong Kong and that he should take adequate precautions. Kao was, of course, aware of the pitfalls. ‘Being a foreigner, I was quite conspicuous. This was emphatically underlined to me on my first visit to Beijing, where at the preliminary meeting with Mr Zhou Enlai, in grave terms, it was pointed out to me that the Chinese Government had information that the KMT intelligence clique, as they called it, was planning to assassinate me. He warned me that I should take good care of myself, because their information had come from a very reliable source. While I thanked him, I said that being a foreigner in Ho
ng Kong and living in a hotel which is manned entirely by the Chinese, there was little that I could do to protect myself,’ Kao noted in his recollection.
At the same time, RNK requested the Chinese Premier to inform the Governor of Hong Kong about their apprehension and take any measures they deemed fit to protect him. The request was promptly met. On his return to Hong Kong, the Director of the Hong Kong Special Branch met RNK and said he was instructed to provide adequate security to him. Accordingly, a British Inspector would accompany RNK, who would drive him around in Hong Kong in an unmarked car throughout his stay.
‘All this came in very handy, although I do not know how far they were effective in protecting me against any attack by the KMT agents about whom Mr Zhou Enlai had warned me. But it was certainly convenient to have a police car, even if it is unmarked, and a British inspector of police to accompany me whenever I went out of the hotel. The person earmarked for this duty was a young British inspector of the Hong Kong Police, whom we shall call Jones,’ Kao remarked.
The Chinese would not, however, let RNK sleep in peace. At least twice, Hsiung, the Chinese investigator stationed in Hong Kong and working with RNK, warned him about the strong possibility of an assassination attempt. ‘Considering that the reports that the Chinese Government had received about the manner in which the Kashmir Princess had been sabotaged had been proved uncannily accurate, which left me with some uncomfortable feeling as I did not fancy myself ending my career lying in some obscure lane in Hong Kong with a knife in my back. In due course, however, I got used to living with the danger,’ RNK wrote.
RNK was, however, experienced enough to take his own precautions, such as not walking the streets at night, avoiding bylanes and being careful about what he ate and where he ate. He recalled that one amusing fallout of these precautions was that he had to carry all the investigation-related papers in a briefcase all the time in the absence of a strong box or a safe. ‘The briefcase was my constant companion even when I went out in the evenings for parties or any other social engagement, and, in due course, this became the subject of some amusement amongst my acquaintances, who referred to my briefcase as my darling, from whom I never could afford to be separated. In the hotel too I never lost sight of this briefcase. If I went to the bathroom, I took it with me and at night, I kept it under the mattress of my bed. I was able to relax some of these precautions a few months later when Rajan, the stenographer from Delhi, was sent to help me, because then it was often impossible for me to arrange for him to stand guard over these papers while I went out for some appointments,’ RNK recalls.
As for the investigation itself, RNK was acutely conscious of the fact that this case had political overtones right from the beginning. His task was to ensure triangular liaison between India, China and the British. The Chinese were naturally quite agitated about the death of their nationals. ‘They were also suspicious about the motive of the British, and, in this context, they also felt that some of the statements issued by the British Government in Hong Kong had overtones of the Cold War. In this atmosphere, the Government of India generally, and Pandit Nehru personally, tried to act as a bridge between the English and the Chinese. This point was made by Pandit Nehru in his talks with Zhou Enlai in Bandung. In fact, Prime Minister Nehru then went on to reassure the Chinese Premier about the role of the Indonesian Government, who appeared to be sensitive and did not like being pushed into an inquiry,’ Kao noted. In Bandung, Prime Minister Nehru also made a point to mention RNK’s exact role to the Chinese Premier and told him that the Indian officer would succeed only if the Hong Kong Police as well as the Chinese authorities cooperated wholeheartedly.
However, RNK also faced a typical Indian turf war even before he formally joined the probe. The officer of the Civil Aviation Department, K.M. Raha, was unhappy that an engineer from his department was part of RNK’s team. So was Col A.K. Mitra, the India’s military attaché to Indonesia. Both thought that RNK and his team were getting more importance, and that their own position in the Indonesian Commission of Enquiry was being threatened. However, a direct intervention from Prime Minister Nehru, who wrote a long note to the Commonwealth Secretary explaining India’s approach, finally convinced Messrs Raha and Mitra that RNK’s team had nothing to do with them or their role.
To come back to the actual probe in Hong Kong, RNK went and met the Governor as soon as he returned from Beijing on 18 May 1955 and shared with him a list of suspects that the Chinese had prepared and also explained other relevant points from his meetings in Beijing. ‘I stressed to the Governor that in order to retain the confidence of the Chinese, it was essential that immediate steps must be taken to ensure that the suspects identified by them did not run away. He agreed to have the matter examined by officers and arranged a meeting for me to meet them to discuss the plan of action,’ Kao recalled.
His next meeting was with the Commissioner of Police, Maxwell, and the Director of Special Branch, Wilcox, and other British officers. Following the conference with the British officers, RNK went to meet Hsuing, the Chinese officer, and conveyed to him ‘in general terms’ that the British were taking immediate steps to secure the suspects. This three-way confabulation was in keeping with the instructions RNK had received from Prime Minister Nehru and DIB Mullik.
‘Throughout these talks, I constantly kept in my mind the instructions given to me by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and repeated by Mr Mullik that I should try to retain the confidence of the British as well as the Chinese and do nothing that would later be challenged by either. An interesting part of the meetings I had with the Chinese in Beijing was that as far as they were concerned, the matter seemed to be dealt with only at the highest level. This was an evidence of the fact that they attached the greatest importance to the case. While in Beijing, I met only Premier Zhou Enlai and no one else. There were three meetings with him during my stay there. Hsiung, the police officer, was introduced to me only on the last day, when he quickly excused himself after the introduction and went out of the room,’ RNK noted in his recollection.
The British were, however, less than truthful about the status of the suspects involved in the sabotage. RNK discovered this when he joined for dinner at Police Commissioner Maxwell’s house a day after his return from Beijing, and after meeting the Governor and the police officers. Maxwell told RNK, without batting an eyelid, that the main criminal, Chou Chu (who had allegedly planted the bomb), had definitely managed to stow away in an American-owned civil transport company plane, which left Hong Kong Airport at 10 AM on 18 May, six hours before RNK arrived in Hong Kong and gave the names to the Governor!
RNK was shocked but recovered quickly to inform Hsiung about the escape of the main suspect. Commissioner Maxwell and others in Hong Kong, as if to console RNK, said had the information he had brought from Beijing been shared with them even eight hours earlier, the criminal would have been arrested. In his typically understated style, RNK wrote, ‘This is a statement I would accept only with a pinch of salt.’
In fact, RNK felt he was caught in a pincer. The Hong Kong authorities pretended to take adequate interest in the case but constantly asked RNK to persuade the Chinese representative to part with more information, so that they could take proper action.
‘The Commissioner of Police, whom I used to meet almost daily, and the Governor himself continued to go through the motion, urging me to ask Hsiung to give more information so that they could carry out determined action to liquidate the whole KMT terrorist gang in Hong Kong. And they constantly begged for cooperation from the Chinese. In response to this, and perhaps in order to tire me out completely and exhaust my patience, in a typical Chinese style, Hsiung developed the habit of sending for me late at night or very early in the morning,’ Kao noted. The Chinese representative was also less than forthcoming and adopted a coercive attitude towards RNK, remaining parsimonious about sharing information.
The British, during their informal interactions with Kao, confided in him that they were convinced about
the sabotage angle but were not sure if the case would stand legal scrutiny in the court of law. They were dismayed that the Chinese, despite possessing full knowledge of the conspiracy and conspirators, shared the information too late and in small doses, which was inexplicable.
As days passed and investigations continued in fits and starts, Zhou Enlai arrived in Hong Kong towards the end of May 1955. After meeting the Governor, he also met RNK and said he was pleased with the way he (Kao) had gone about his task. Zhou, in fact, wrote a letter of appreciation about RNK to Prime Minister Nehru but continued to be sceptical about the intentions of the Hong Kong Police and the British authorities. Krishna Menon, who was then the leader of the Indian delegation to the UN but was arguably the second most-powerful man in India after Nehru, suggested to the Indian Prime Minister that DIB Mullik should visit Hong Kong to show India’s seriousness in the investigations into the Kashmir Princess case, and also impress both the British and the Chinese.
Mullik arrived in Hong Kong in early June 1955, held separate meetings with the British and the Chinese sides, and, of course, took full briefing from RNK. ‘In keeping with the policy decision by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru regarding India’s role in this investigation, Mr Mullik tried to bring about a better understanding between the Chinese, on the one hand, and the British authorities in Hong Kong, on the other. He was satisfied that the British were making genuine efforts to investigate the case, but the Chinese representative appeared to be unhappy because he felt that the British were being unduly secretive, and was agreeing to give to the Chinese information only about the specific case of sabotage and not any intelligence relating to the KMT espionage network, which had been operating in Hong Kong. Mullik was also good enough to appreciate my efforts to remain in touch constantly with both the sides and to keep the Chinese informed about the progress made by the British in the investigation of the case as far as possible,’ RNK recalled.
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