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Thirty Years Ago
Twelve IAF men in Pakistan’s
pay
The roles are reversed, it seems. While the Government of Smt Indira
Gandhi is playing politics, the Opposition has taken on itself to
govern the country. In the Lok Sabha Shri R.N. Mirdha, Minister of
State for Home Affairs, presented a strange spectacle this week when
he asked Jana Sangh's Kanwar Lal Gupta to let him know any information
he had about espionage in the country, particularly Chandigarh. The
Jana Sangh M.P. who makes his own one-man CBI, had teased the Minister
with the startling bit of information that 12 IAF men from Chandigarh
had gone over to Pakistan for training in espionage. Gupta brought
in this subject somewhat casually during the calling attention motion
on two Pakistani girls spending a night with survey officer Kohli
and escaping with some important maps and documents. What happened
in Shillong was bad enough but what happened in Chandigarh three months
earlier was disastrous indeed. According to Gupta's version of this
most tragic episode of espionage, about a dozen Indian airmen employed
in the strategic MiG Airbase at Chandigarh were in the pay of Pakistan
through a cycle repairer. His assumed name was “Lal Chand”. The IAF
men and Iqbal Mohammed alias Lal Chand are now in custody, here in
India.
The whole espionage ring was burst by
an alert Indian road-side shopkeeper, next to the “cycle shop”. The
Indian, whose name the Government for some mysterious reason, wants
to keep off from the public, felt suspicious when “Lal Chand” phoned
up some IAF men and used some words which a Hindu normally does not
use. One such word “Lal Chand” used was “gosht” (meat), which is typically
Muslim. (In Punjab, Sikhs call it ‘Maha Pershad’ and others say maans'.)
He shadowed “Lal Chand” during his own intelligence work and then
came to the firm conclusion that “Lal Chand” was no innocent cycle
repairer but that he had links with IAF men, a relationship beyond
his calling.
The rest was easy and the police got
these men. “Lal Chand”, now in custody, has made clean breast of everybody
and is sure he will be exchanged with some Indian prisoners in Pakistan
but his confessions have an element of spy fiction. For instance through
one IAF man or the other, Iqbal (“Lal Chand”) knew of every bit of
activity at the IAF base—which plane was at which hangar; when did
it move; which officer was doing what. A copy of every confidential
note that ever moved in the files reached his “cycle shop”! But the
most sensational disclosure was that a dozen IAF men had stealthily
gone to Pakistan at one time or the other for ‘training’. They had
slipped across the border, stayed there for a month or two, were properly
dined and wined and then returned to Chandigarh. All this for a mere
Rs 500 to Rs 1000 per head per month! December 19, 1970
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