THE MYSTIC: PART I - THE SEEKER (Part 1 - THE SEEKER)

by Arindam Bhattacharjee

  “I had a stomach upset in the morning and had to go to the hospital. That’s why I am late.”

  The guy replied,

  “Oh, well you could have informed the office that you are coming late.”

  Christina replied,

  “Very well next time I will do that.”

  Anticipating that Raghav was going to follow the same schedule the next day Christina said,

  “I have also an appointment scheduled for tomorrow so I will be late again.”

  The guy turned back without making any comment. Christina could not understand why many people were interested in what she was doing in the office. Obviously she was not reporting to any one of them but today she felt the way the guy confronted her was not appropriate. She took up the task to figure out the places from where the organization was receiving its funding to take care of all the non-performing assets.

  Very soon she realized that most of the investor firms had some fundamentalist leaders in their board of directors. It was very obvious that Raghav was suggesting that media organizations like this were involved in spreading government propaganda.

  4.6: The Story of the Slow Death of the Naxal Movement in

  India

  Christina noticed that Sagarika was resorting to new tactics in the office. She would give her a long stare. Christina had learnt that this was a colonial tactics still practiced in Indian offices to keep subordinate the employees. She also noticed that young individuals were always threatened with their jobs on very petty issues. Her new found friends had been telling her that the key to success was to keep Madam Sagarika happy; this was a task Christina knew she could not do.

  She also felt that the agency would act in a munificent manner during the first few days of receiving the fellowship money. Christina always placed values above money. Here the employees were always fawning and the firm had no set goals or targets. It seemed to Christina that it was provident that she had insured her position in the organization by making friends with the other woman.

  Initially she was skeptical of the task given to her by the think tank but after reading the history of Raghav, she accepted the task with such gusto that she was ready to overlook the harassment done in the office and the low pay offered. The financial reports of the company were convoluted and made very little sense to her, but she understood the dangerous nexus between the state and the media – something which Raghav spoke about in the morning.

  She was waiting the next morning for Raghav to speak more about the past. The team had prepared the drones to be sent again to the location early in the morning to monitor the movements of Raghav.

  Following the same routine, Raghav woke up early in the morning for a jog and some exercises. Christina hooked onto her laptop to see the whole process. She felt happy to see Raghav trying to get back to normalcy as it was her efforts that had given life to his lifeless form in the lab. She could clearly understand that Raghav was not someone who like a rat was undergoing physical tests but he was an intellectual to be honoured in society.

  She felt a feeling of repugnance against the state for taking away the life from a man of such high calibre. She could not help but appreciate the fact that Raghav instead of going back to his family spent the time unearthing the past. Raghav finished the morning practice and came to sit on the charpoy to address the comrades. All the comrades had already gathered there and so too was the drone to listen to what Raghav was going to say.

  Debashish asked,

  “Raghav, we are all eager to listen to what happened to the Naxal movement.”

  Raghav replied,

  “That’s why I woke up so early to address your queries.”

  The comrades went into laughter. Raghav started,

  “As everyone knows the Naxalite movement started from the place called Naxalbari in West Bengal. It started against the zamindars and the movement spread across the country known as the Red Corridor region. Then Emergency was imposed by Indira Gandhi.”

  “This was the time when India lost its top intellectuals from universities like the Saint Stephen’s college, St Xavier’s College, Jadavpur and Shibpur. They returned as body bags. But slowly the movement lost its grip among the intellectuals in the country during the 80s. After the liberalization in the 90s the movement got restricted to small villages in some locations.”

  Raghav waited to see if everyone was following what he was saying before continuing,

  “One thing I must say, the movement never evolved with time. One mistake I feel they did was that they tried to introduce the concept of no-religion in a country which is inherently spiritual. Also most of them stuck to few concepts from leaders like Mao and Lenin, but did not experiment with philosophies of other thinkers like Gramsci and others who were not extremists.”

  “By the time the new millennium came, there was a huge difference between the urban and the rural regions of India. The contrast helped to feed the movement and many tribals in the villages got stuck between the government and the Maoists forces. There was a lot of bloodshed in the region and both sides saw many lives lost.”

  “The Maoists took innovative steps in deploying explosives and undertaking ambushes but I feel the biggest mistake was that they did not take the fight to urban regions. To tackle the Maoist insurgency the Central Government deployed special units of CRPF and BSF in these areas but never engaged the army to undertake these operations. But this was going to change.”

  Raghav paused for a glass of water. Meanwhile Christina was keenly listening as Raghav continued,

  “The war between the Maoists and the government went on with efforts on negotiations also taking place. But when the fundamentalists came to power, they recruited from the army to build up Special Task Forces to eliminate the Maoists.”

  “They declared all the Maoists to be terrorists and orders were given from the center to disseminate the entire movement. These individuals took part in operations with the support from the intelligence agencies like CIA and Mossad to counter the Maoists.”

  “The first few attacks were brutal and gory and many thinkers objected to the use of such force against civilians. Initially government showcased this as a triumph but later cancelled such operations. But in reality these military operations using Artificial Intelligence continued as covert operations.”

  Raghav then looked at his paper on memory maps and commented, “Well from what I learnt, somehow they had the actual information about the locations where the leaders of these movements were hiding. The government sent special units to neutralize the enemy.”

  Debashish interrupted Raghav and asked,

  “But if they were covert operations how did you come to know about this.”

  “Yes the quality of operations was covert in nature and no media was allowed to cover the operations but government did not stop in trumpeting their own successes after neutralizing the enemy. For this I followed the same technique employed in my case to defame me.”

  “So my understanding was if the government was writing against any individual as part of its propaganda machine, it meant that they just neutralized the enemy. I also tried to find the regional newspaper on such reports to find out the areas where these events happened.”

  “Some regional newspapers did give explicit details of some of these events but the language prevented mostly Hindi speaking propaganda units to take action. From these reports I made my timeline of events and marked the location where these activities took place.”

  Raghav showed on his map the different regions where the operations took place describing each event. Raghav said,

  “During the initial few years they were mostly targeting neutral individuals sympathetic to the movement but slowly there was an exponential increase in the way they neutralized the leaders of the movement.”

  “Most of these individuals were hidden deep inside the forests but the government successfully tracked them down and killed them. They also killed and took prisoners many of the cadres involve
d in these operations.”

  Raghav then pointed to the events on the maps that showed how the military operations penetrated deep inside the dense forests of the country. Raghav said,

  “In a matter of three years the complete movement was wiped out from the face of the world. Why did some of you survive? It was because you did not pose any threat to the country; the others caused collateral damage.”

  A tear trickled down Raghav’s cheeks thinking about his wife. His voice became heavy thinking about his lost friends. He instantly got up from the charpoy and went inside the hut unable to speak further. The emotional gesture that Christina witnessed disturbed her. As a journalist she was able to distance herself from the suffering. She could not understand how the government could be so ruthless against its own citizens.

  Christina came to the office with a heavy heart. She had taken notes from Raghav’s speech about the Naxalite movement and spent the whole day researching the individuals and places Raghav referred to in his speech. She could not believe that the entire media was involved in such a huge cover up. She suspected that the Sagarika was also involved in some of these cover up activities.

  Christina went back to the articles she had published. There were many pieces on different individuals and one in particular was about Raghav. Christina understood that there was a bigger problem that she needed to look into for understanding why and how democracy could become so autocratic. It reminded her of Hitler’s Germany when experiments were conducted on humans to create weapons. What exactly did the Government of India plan to achieve in the labs was still unknown.

  Chapter 5

  The Assault

  5.1: The Mole in the Unit

  Raghav’s comrades were very enthusiastic about his return to the village in the outskirts of Mayurbhanj. After listening for two days about the past, everyone expected Raghav to come up with new plans for the future. After all he was the most respected among all the comrades present. But Raghav was keen to keep his profile low and find out more before planning for the future. Though he might have explained the events of the past to his colleagues, his mind constantly kept rejecting the fact that these events were true.

  He would go into sessions of arguments and counter arguments within himself but regarding how things have fallen apart but was never satisfied. He was also keen in studying the behavior of the new comrades and whether they were willing to make the sacrifices that the comrades of the yester years made. He also wanted to see if they had the leadership skills and be assigned with some responsibilities.

  After the briefing of the two days about the past, Raghav did not take any more sessions. He became involved in daily yoga practices in the mornings and evenings. Christina’s team waited for three more days and then wrapped it all up to return to Jharkhand for the break and for overhauling the whole system.

  The security lapse in Kolkata while catching Raghav had sent a chill down the spine of the intelligence units and the government. It was very imperative that Raghav should be brought down before he could speak to media. It was also not known what information Raghav had about the facility. The Intelligence Bureau kept the military in the dark so that news of the lapse did not spread.

  The modus operandi of the intelligence units was to track the presence of any domestic or foreign media units near the Kolkata region which could help Raghav send a distress call to the West. Local agents were put in fields to track down any activities by journalists in the area. Aerial reconnaissance and satellite images were used to track rogue journalist units in different cities of India.

  The intelligence units were tasked to stop all activities of the press in the region and maintain a complete blackout. During this whole process Christina’s unit in Ranchi was caught off-guard by the intelligence agencies with their drones.

  Thankfully during the overhauling process and following the standard practice they always followed in such missions, they timely deleted all information about Raghav. But the presence of such units in the city of Ranchi and its linkage to the Manipur operation brought the team under suspicion for being involved in anti-government activities.

  The intelligence bureau apprehended all the journalists and sent them to a holding facility in New Delhi for interrogation. They showed their journalist identities and the organization they belonged to but the Intelligence Bureau was not going to let them off that easily. Guruji intervened and ordered the Intelligence Bureau officials to resort to all kinds of torture to get information from them about involvement in Manipur operations.

  The team, mostly from ex-special forces, was prepared to handle situations of this nature and even under duress they did not provide any intelligence about Raghav, Christina or Manipur operations. They successfully evaded the intelligence questioning.

  Christina too had no idea of the latest development that had taken place. She was worried that the worse might have happened with the team but did not dare to make any move. She noticed that Sagarika had again become suspicious of Christina's activities and begun interfering regularly in her work. It seemed she knew something about Christina's work and passed the information to intelligence agencies about her frequent travels to North-East and recently to West Bengal and Orissa. The intelligence agencies had issued an alert on foreign journalists involved in anti-government operations.

  In the meantime the intelligence agencies deployed their own teams in regions near Ranchi to find any signs of Raghav. Guruji had suggested that these individuals might be hand in glove with Raghav. The intelligence agencies also asked the Indian Air Force to conduct reconnaissance sorties over Orissa, Bihar and West Bengal to find any signs of other drone activities in the region. On seeing the intensified operations by air force over the region, one comrade from Raghav’s unit got scared and surrendered to the local police.

  Raghav has developed a phobia about bright lights after the series of grenades that had exploded next to him when he had almost died. He could not sit in front of any light for long and usually skipped off to some dark corner where he would sit quietly. His comrades knew that Raghav generally haunted squalid dump yards spilling over with parts of rusted vehicles and all types of trash – ideal joints for sitting undisturbed away from human activity.

  Raghav was sitting in such a location when Debashish came running to break the news. Panting Debashish said,

  “The cops know we are here. We have to pack up our bags and find another hideout as soon as possible.”

  Raghav quietly stood up and walked towards Debashish without saying a word.

  Debashish continued,

  “I think we should make for the islands in Andaman which your friend Ganguly has suggested. These islands inhabited by few tribals are secluded regions are off bounds even for the armed forces as per UN laws. We have arranged for a boat that will take us there.”

  Raghav stared at Debashish as if asking that there could be nothing as stupid as a boat ride. Debashish understanding Raghav’s doubts commented,

  “We are not going from here or Bhubaneshwar. We will move more towards the south to start our journey.”

  “Ganguly has arranged for the boat from a small village near Vishakhapatnam. I think that place would be safe to carry out the operations.”

  Raghav and his men took a vehicle and hopped from one village to another in the hope that the security agencies were not on their trail. On the third day they reached the village near Vishakhapatnam where a fishing trawler was standing by to take Raghav and his men to Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The agencies were not likely to suspect fishing trawlers to venture deep into the Bay of Bengal.

  The fishing trawler took another four days to reach a remote island in the Andaman Sea. Ganguly had already made arrangements on the islands. Tents had already been pitched for the team to make their stay comfortable. He had also stacked rations for many months so that Raghav and his men could stay hidden for a long time.

  5.2: Memorizing the History

  The swift escape from Mayurbhanj to
Andaman raised many questions that haunted Raghav. The most important one - why did the army keep him alive for so long but was now searching furiously for him? What kind of information might he be carrying within himself that led to such an exhaustive search mission being carried out by the intelligence agencies?

  Raghav remembered the scene from inside the facility where a multiple probes were inserted in his head; it was the same with many other individuals. He could remember that there were scores of them and tried to focus on his memory. Was his wife there? The thought haunted him – was she dead or kept confined in some other place?

  Raghav took some time to get used to the saline environment on the island; gradually he began to deeply relax. The sudden headaches and drowsiness had completely gone and he now felt fresh on this island. He enjoyed drinking coconut water; it soothed his nerves. With his brain clearing be began anew to understand the happenings in the Manipur facility.

  But one thing Raghav noticed in himself. He had developed an acute sense of appreciating the environment. It seems somehow his intellectual acumen has not waned during these years and he had started seeing things differently from before when he was in the thick of business. He also felt that he had developed an acute sixth sense and was able to sense danger or any event even before it happened.