‘Babe, babeee’ wears a white shirt rolled to the elbows, black cap and khaki pants at the podium he shares with a powerful man.
Months later he is compromised. He was besotted with a Pakistani intelligence operative pretending to be a patriotic Indian woman, according to the Maharashtra Police. She promised him intimate trysts. They addressed each other as ‘babe’ and ‘babeee’ in the transcripts of emails and messages the police have released. He gave out state secrets about missiles and drones.
Sex, sax, sangh and shenanigans are the highlights in spygames that mark 2023 out as the year of the dirty trickster for India.
A court in Pune has rejected the bail application of Dr Pradeep Moreshwar Kurulkar, ‘Outstanding Scientist’ of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) who headed one of the agency’s laboratories. In the normal course of things, Kurulkar would have retired last month when he turned 60 years unless he was given an extension.
The electrical engineer and designer of missile launchpads is by his own admission an associate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with whose head, Mohan Bhagwat, he has shared the podium in praise of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and for whom he played the saxophone for more than a decade. His family, he has said in an interview on YouTube, has been with the RSS for three generations.
The videos of the programmes were released by the Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera at a press conference in New Delhi in May, shortly after his arrest. Kurulkar’s lawyer has pleaded in court that the information he exchanged was not classified and was available in the public domain.
A month-and-a-half after Kurulkar’s arrest on May 3, Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot in a parking lot in Canada on June 18. Nijjar’s is the classic story of “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. He was wanted by Indian authorities. They had put out a red corner notice for him through the Interpol in 2016 for his association with Khalistani organisations that were banned by Indian law.
In Canada he was viewed as a human rights activist. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had warned that there was a threat to his life. After his killing videos showing Nijjar firing a machine gun at what looks like a range have surfaced.
India-Canada relations nosedived after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau practically accused New Delhi of carrying out a hit job in Canadian territory. He said in his Parliament that he was “pursuing credible allegations of a potential link” between Indian agents and the killing of Nijjar.
The Indian response has been largely derisive of Canada and barely took into account that Ottawa was a member of the “Five Eyes”, the informal forum of intelligence exchange between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
A self-hurting ban on Indian visas for Canadian nationals — there is a large Indian diaspora in the North American country — that was imposed immediately after Trudeau’s statement was quietly withdrawn last month.
Between the ban and its withdrawal though, New Delhi was nonplussed by the US. An indictment of the US Department of Justice has alleged that an Indian intelligence agent hired Nikhil Gupta, who faced cases in Gujarat, to hire an American to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Pannun has been an accomplice of Nijjar.
Pannun is also a Khalistani activist, a US citizen. His house near Chandigarh was attached by the Indian state. In a comical turn of events the hitman hired by Gupta turned out to be an American undercover agent himself. The allegations against India are so serious that the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) chief Christopher Wray visited New Delhi this week to meet with heads of Indian intelligence agencies.
The loudmouthed Pannun has often been viewed as a crank, making recorded calls to Indians and threatening them. He has little or no traction in Punjab, where Sikhs are in a majority, since the troubles of the mid-1980s. The Indian official attention to Pannun has amplified his voice more than an ignore would.
But the US DoJ indictment, coming after Canada’s charges, has been taken far more seriously in New Delhi than Ottawa’s. The easy reason for this is that the US has the muscle that Canada does not. A more grounded reason is that any messing with the ‘Five Eyes’ would have consequences with each member backing up the other.
Shooting through glasswork has not helped New Delhi stave off the shards. Inevitably, even as cheerleaders celebrate a larger-than-life image of “unknown persons” bumping off terrorists in foreign lands, it is ordinary Indians who often shoulder the brunt.
In the face-off with Canada, the ban on visas hurt Indians and persons of Indian origin more than it did non-Indian Canadians. At any point in time there are multiples more Indians wanting to migrate to the US and Canada than there are Canadians and Americans wanting to visit India.
The image of an India gone rogue risks the lives of ordinary citizens like the eight former Indian Navy sailors and officers who are now incarcerated in Qatar. A court of first instance has pronounced the death sentence on them on charges of espionage. India is pursuing legal and political means to get them back.
The case goes back at least two years during which New Delhi could do little. In fact, at one time the foreign office said they did not even know the details of the charges.
Typically, in militaries, veterans seek second careers because most retire early. That was also the case with the eight Indians, one of whom is a celebrated Captain, who were hired to work for a private contractor on projects for the oil-rich kingdom’s navy. Qatar is also home to the largest US airbase in West Asia.
The bluster of “ghar mein ghus ke maarenge” when the Chinese swallow Indian territory in Ladakh pampers megalomania at the cost of India and Indians. That is why it is so much more dangerous than the sleaze of sex, sax and sanghi shenanigans.
Sujan Dutta is a journalist based in Delhi. He tweets from @reportersujan
