by Sree Iyer
Karan needed to find out where the six men who came out of the labs had disappeared. He had a couple of IB operatives hang out at the nearest TASMAC bar to pick on gossip from the area. Karan’s hunch was right and with more alcohol doing the rounds, there was more talk. An operative picked up someone say that one Muthu suddenly seemed to have come into money and had begun acting smart. Such erratic behaviour in a village is easily noticed, and the IB promptly tagged Muthu as a person of interest.
Karan alerted his IB scouts to see if Muthu would go to the TASMAC bar the following evening. He arrived well before that, right in the morning. Muthu was a habitual drunk and had been missing out on his favourite hangout because he was asked to stay in the underground lab. By mid-afternoon, he was practically singing, except that he was incoherent. The IB officer recorded Muthu’s blather surreptitiously and determined that he was in no shape to divulge any useful information for the moment. He uploaded the conversation anyway and decided to tail the man. There was no point in apprehending him, not when he could lead them to more crucial information.
Priya offered to attempt deciphering Muthu’s rant. Although a Malayali, she understood Tamil and could put together the gist of what Muthu had spoken. She could make out that there were two characters he was referring to as Nettai (tall for Tamil) and Kuttai (short); and how Nettai was yelling at him constantly. Karan and Priya surmised that the ISI handler must be the tall one and the scientist the short one.
Like Priya, the Intelligence Bureau chief thought multi-dimensionally. Mike reasoned that since the lab workers must be using water, there should be chemical effluents being spewed from all the processing that was going on. Where was that being stored or redirected to? That too needed to be tackled urgently since it posed serious hazards for the population in the vicinity.
CHAPTER 28.
Sex slaves for Jihad
On the day of the hearing, the Kerala High Court pulled up the state government for failing to act on Nafisa’s complaint. The government defended its position by pointing out that the police had registered a complaint against Sadiq and Iqbal, and that further action would follow. That it did not have any intention to act meaningfully, was not told to the judge. Nor was the court ever informed that the senior most police officials had assured the Haji Pir Mohammad that the police would find ways to diffuse the matter.
The court had directed the administration to produce Nafisa so that she could be questioned on the issue. Given that she had alleged rape, the judge had offered an in-camera hearing in his chamber, but Nafisa said that she had no problem in deposing before the open court; she had done no wrong and had no reason to feel any shame. She related the sequence of events leading to her violation and alleged that her husband and Iqbal were responsible for it. She also informed the court that her husband and Iqbal were plotting to send her to Syria to ‘service’ the jihadists working for the terror group, Islamic State. The judge was stunned by her revelations.
The lawyers for the two accused refuted her allegations and said she had made up these stories to frame her husband and his friend. They claimed that Nafisa had begun demanding large sums of money from her husband, threatening to implicate him if he did not oblige. As for rape, Iqbal’s lawyer said that it had been consensual sex.
The court demanded to know if Nafisa’s medical examination had been conducted, which was mandatory after he she had lodged the FIR alleging rape. Nafisa informed that no medical examination had been done. The judge was furious, and it was obvious to the lawyers of the accused as well as the state’s advocate that the tide was turning against them.
Nafisa told the court that she wished to return to her parents’ home as her life was in danger at her husband’s place. She pointed out that neither the police nor the state administration had been cooperative and it appeared they were complicit in the matter. At the end of a four-hour hearing, the judge ordered the state to provide police protection to her, banned Iqbal from visiting Sadiq’s house, directed that a medical examination be conducted, and set the next date of hearing for a month later. It warned Sadiq of grave consequences in case he mistreated her. The court said it would decide on Nafisa’s plea for return to her parents’ home at the next hearing.
Meanwhile, the ISI handler Javed, was busy managing the SRL fiasco. But he also had the additional responsibility of promoting Love Jihad in Kerala and neighbouring regions that had a considerable Muslim population. He received news coming from Malappuram with concern. The court was playing the spoiler and he wondered whether something should be done about the judge. But he rejected the idea because it could further complicate matters. He was banking on his network there, particularly the Haji, to contain the damage. Patience was critical for now.
It was patience that had helped Javed rise up the ladder, after all. He had been a low-level soldier in the Pakistani Army during the reign of General Zia-ul-Haq. When the military dictator launched his Islamic radicalisation programme in the army, Javed jumped on the bandwagon. He began to rat on those who were not following the new rules that General Zia had laid down. His superiors, who were falling head over heals to please the new dictator, would dutifully pass on critical information to him and earned accolades and promotions in return. As a consequence, Javed shot into the limelight and even earned an audience with the dictator. Soon, he was shifted to the ISI, where the scope for his kind of murky work was enormous.
General Zia had a long reign before his death, and during that period Javed kept progressing. He became a senior operative in the agency and later took charge of the India operations. He entered India on a passport, which revealed neither his real name nor his occupation, or even his nationality. It showed him to be a Palestinian scientist employed by SRL to conduct seed research that would revolutionise agriculture in India. Those were the days in the mid-2000s when the Indian authorities treated Palestinians leniently, refusing to act even when allegations of dubious activities surfaced against them. Months after he relocated to India, his senior handlers at the ISI, based in Rawalpindi, had entrusted him with the task of promoting what came to known as Love Jihad.
Karan was engrossed in the SRL matter when a dossier marked ‘Top secret, Urgent’ landed on his desk. The file had made its way from the director’s office. It was the Nafisa Bi case and the director had cryptically noted: “Interesting new developments. Get in touch with your contacts in the CBI and take the matter forward. NSA concurrence received.” Karan would have to shift focus away from SRL, at least for some time. That didn’t bother him much, since Priya was doing a fantastic job and he was confident that she could handle the issue on her own until he could come back to it.
Karan called up the CBI officer in charge and spoke to him at length. This was a golden opportunity, both agreed, for the case to be reopened and pursued to its logical end. The government at the centre had changed and so had the mindset of the intelligence establishment. As was his habit, Karan immediately immersed himself in reading up every bit of information on the subject.
He learned, from a Reuters Institute report, about Nikah-ul-Jihad, a fatwa that had been issued in 2013 and had its roots in Tunisia. The fatwa suggested that women should offer themselves as sex slaves to jihadi fighters. The report said, “The purpose of this was purportedly to relieve a man of distracting sexual frustration during times of war.” The fatwa gave permission to a man to marry a woman for a week or even for a few hours, to have ‘halal’ sex with her. The fatwa had resulted in several women returning home pregnant or stricken with disease, having been abused by dozens of men.
The concept, Karan further read, had originated from the Saudi Wahhabi cleric, Sheikh Mohammad al-Arefe, who had called upon Sunni Muslim women to present themselves for sexual jihad, in support of Mujahideen fighting the Syrian Army of Bashar al-Assad. In present times, this concept gained ground especially in Islamic State-controlled regions in various countries. The bigoted clerics had dished out the justification that in the fight for Islam, even what is w
rong, can be converted into ‘halal’ and become pious. Anything that serves the purpose of their faith is not only acceptable but also commendable.
His sense of disgust grew as Karan continued to read the Reuters Institute report. The IS had in 2014 captured areas around Kurdish Iraq, occupied largely by the Yezidi people, whose religion is similar to that of the Parsis. The IS had attacked villages, separated the men from the women, killed the men and taken the women as sex slaves. “The women are stripped naked and their bodies examined for breast size and attractiveness. Virginity tests were performed too. A price is decided and the women are sold at a market, with the youngest and the prettiest fetching the highest price.” According to a report that Reuters Institute quoted, girls under nine years of age fetched the highest price. Everything done in the name of Islam and Allah, he noted with anger.
The IS had even released a pamphlet, offering guidance to its followers on the subject. Here’s a sample:
“What is al-Sabi?”
“Al-Sabi is a woman from the ahl-al-harb (people of war) who has been captured by Muslims.”
“What makes al-Sabi permissible?”
“What makes it permissible (to take such a woman captive and use her as a sex slave) is the fact that she does not believe in Islam. Non-believing women who are captured and brought into the abode of Islam are permissible to us, after the Imam distributed them (among us).”
Karan needed a mug of strong coffee to settle his nerves. He had no doubt that such disgusting practices were not limited to just the non-Muslim women. Even those who had been manipulated into converting to Islam, stood every risk of sexual exploitation. Nafisa Bi was indeed facing a grim future if she were not rescued.
However, Nafisa was a drop in the ocean. The investigation and intelligence agencies had to crack down on the larger conspiracy. He was aware that much damage had already been done, but further damage could be prevented.
The Kerala High Court had given the agencies an opening. Karan met Mike and suggested that the CBI’s lawyer should approach the Supreme Court and seek to reopen probe into Love Jihad. Mike immediately contacted the CBI chief and passed on the advice.
CHAPTER 29.
The Cover is Blown
At moderate concentration levels, Ricin is not harmful, but in a highly purified form, it is fatal. The elaborate process of purification was being closely monitored by Javed and the blackmailed scientist, Rehman. The most reliable method to check the purity was the use of a Gas Chromatograph Meter (GCM) or an infrared spectroscope. The problem was that they cost the earth, and while the ISI had large funds at its disposal, the money had been thinly spread out on a variety of other causes, such as the training of militants, procuring firearms and propagating Love Jihad. Javed had to think of a creative solution that was both economical and not obvious to probe agencies. And he came up with one soon enough.
But that was not the end to their problems. All results had to be carefully recorded, tabulated and compared against references that Rehman had brought along from Dubai. Even after Ricin had been extracted to its most concentrated pure form, it had to be tested on a live being. This was another challenge as they needed lab rats.
After having done his groundwork on Love Jihad, Karan was back on the SRL project. He was pacing about in his hotel room in Chennai, where he had arrived to follow up on the lab’s functioning and confabulate with intelligence personnel posted there. As he watched the rush hour traffic head for the suburbs on the main artery, the Anna Salai, he kept going over the material in hand and the things needed to complete the process. He had been taught to think like a criminal and act like a policeman. It took him no effort to conclude that the lab would be having cutting edge equipment to purify the product to its lethal stage and rats to experiment upon. Rabbits would have been the other preferred specimen but they were hard to find in this part of the country.
Karan was accompanied by Priya who had by then completely immersed herself in the investigations. They pored over all the manifests once again to see if any purity measuring equipment was shipped to SRL, but drew a blank. They were missing something, Karan told Priya, as they ate a quick lunch in his hotel room. Their research had led them to the information that GCMs were used for purification purposes. The duo shifted attention to all Gas Chromatograph Machines imported to southern India to see if they could spot the odd one out. There were a handful that went into chemical research facilities or universities, and they all appeared to be above board.
Priya was not ready to give up. She hurried through the meal and once more went over the list of equipment imported by SRL, which came through at Coimbatore airport. Her heart jumped when she spotted the item, Electron Microscope (EM). She googled all the applications for an Electron Microscope and found that it was typically used to study thin specimens such as tissue sections, molecules etc. Why would SRL need an EM, she wondered, given their nature of work that the IB had already established?
This was not all. There was also the issue of effluents that still remained unsolved. Had SRL constructed a septic tank in the underground bunker? If so, where was all the dirt disposed? Was there a way to look at land records at the local panchayat office to see if this land had changed hands in the recent past? Could a trail be established from that?
It was decided that Karan would go to Pachamalai panchayat and Priya would fly down to Coimbatore to make discreet inquiries about the Electron Microscope. She hoped to get some information on who had signed for and taken the consignment. And, more importantly, how much did it weigh. An EM was about one fifth the weight of a GCM and one tenth its volume. Any anomaly there could amount to a lead.
Karan had little difficulty in getting access to land records at the panchayat office after he flashed his official ID card. The land in question had been bought by one Sterling Properties (P) Ltd, based out of Chennai. Interestingly, the price paid was four times the market rate, which the owner was only too happy to accept. He smelled a rat immediately.
Karan suspected Sterling to be a shell company and casually asked the panchayat official why he had not questioned the buyer’s motive to pay such a large amount. He knew that every real estate deal in Tamil Nadu needed bribing and wanted to make the official uncomfortable about it. Karan also hinted that the issue would be reported to higher authorities if the official refused to cooperate. The panchayat man finally said it all. The price paid was actually 10 times the market value and he had received a handsome ‘cut’ of 10% of the total deal, for not asking uncomfortable questions.
The panchayat official needed no further prodding, especially after Karan promised him immunity in exchange for the rest of the story. The man gave a rough blueprint of the region and said that the digging work had been taken up by a local contractor, whose name and number he managed to fish out. The cookie was beginning to crumble. Karan concluded that SRL had indeed dug an underground tank to store the effluents and septic waste. Tanks need to be pumped out periodically. The general frequency is between six and 12 months and the land had changed hands eight months ago.
Meanwhile, Priya had arrived at Coimbatore with a plan of action. She realised that her profile as an Intelligence Bureau officer might alert people, some of whom could be SRL moles. Coimbatore had of late been in the news for smuggled goods, including contraband gold. Priya had come with an ID card that identified her as a senior functionary of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), an organisation that tracked the smuggling of various items, from drugs to bullion and counterfeit currency.
The DRI chief had been more than cooperative when Mike sought help with preparing a temporary identity for Priya. She had come upon the idea when Priya was already on her way to Coimbatore. The ID card was couriered and delivered to her soon after she had arrived. The officials at the DRI headquarters in New Delhi had been briefed, so that any query from Coimbatore Customs about a Priya Menon would be satisfactorily addressed.
The blue and gold logo of DRI made the customs chief st
and up when she met him. He was several years older to her, due for retirement soon. He hoped that the last few months of his service would pass with ease and the arrival of this young officer did not bring any trouble. He had bought a small patch of land on which he hoped to build a modest house and settle down with his wife. His two children had married and migrated abroad. When Priya walked into his office, he was fantasising about his post-retirement life. The moment she flashed her new ID, he snapped out of the reverie and stood in attention.
He listened carefully while Priya showed him a dozen invoices that had passed through customs and asked to see the officials who had inspected them. There must be records of someone who must have signed for these, with their home address, age, father’s name, village name, name of the first born (a legacy left over from a suspicious British system), and so on.
And so it came to be known that Sterling Enterprises, based in Chennai, had signed for the consignment and loaded it in a container lorry bearing the licence number TN-99-681A. Code 99 referred to Coimbatore and so it was possible that the lorry was locally registered. Priya then looked up the motor vehicles database to run down the address of the container lorry. She took leave of the customs official, assuring him that all was well and wished him a joyful retirement.
A quick trip to the lorry godown filled the blanks. It had been heavy equipment that was transported on a night of heavy rain to Pachamalai, needing several people to offload it at a shed near the village. It could not have been an Electron Microscope. It must surely have been a Gas Chromatograph Meter.