Part 3 (1/2)

'Hamid Sheikh is a patient of mine,' Dr Guru said. 'It's just a doctorpatient relations.h.i.+p. I'm not getting involved in any of this. Sorry. Can't help you.'

He said it straight, and his message was clear. I left, empty- handed.

(Incidentally, Dr Guru was murdered in 1993 by the pro- Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen, which was on a mission to wipe out the pro-independence JKLF.) On the morning of 11 December 1989, Farooq arrived in Kashmir on his return from London. As I've said once, without Farooq Abdullah there was no National Conference and in fact while he was away, the cabinet was pretty much dead except for one meeting in which no one knew what to do or what to decide. On his return Farooq immediately called for a cabinet meeting and his senior ministers complained that they had no idea what was going on.

'Everything is being handled from the office of the IB,' one of them said. 'Even the chief secretary has stopped reporting to us; he only reports to the IB and spends all his time sitting in their office. We have not been kept in the loop at all.'

As usual, this was one of those things you could say was 'almost true'.

Farooq promptly summoned Moosa, who had been projecting himself as the interlocutor, and told him: 'You're no longer the interlocutor.'

The hapless Moosa wondered why, and Farooq said: 'How the h.e.l.l could you not report to the cabinet?'

'But there was no cabinet in your absence,' Moosa pointed out. 'I didn't know who to report to.'

The truth was that poor Moosa was reporting to the cabinet secretary in Delhi, a gentleman by the name of T.N. Seshan, who would go on to gain a reputation for being an a.s.sertive chief election commissioner and for clamping down on electoral malpractices. Moosa was flabbergasted by Farooq's rebuke, and he told Seshan that he might be removed as chief secretary. As a result I got a frantic call from Delhi saying that they had heard that Moosa was being removed. I told them, the chief minister's back and he's in a bit of a huff.

I went to Farooq and said, 'Sir, I'm told you're really angry with Moosa. It's not really his fault. Given the limitations in which we're working, he's doing his best.'

Farooq relented and said, 'Okay, we'll reinstate Moosa.' And then he said to me: 'What the h.e.l.l is going on?'

What was going on is that the gang in Delhi who kept repeating ad nauseam that Farooq was not serious were gunning for him and now they had a good excuse: he wasn't in J&K at a crucial time like this and it had taken him three days to come back. That he was no good. Farooq was no fool and he saw that two parallel games were playing out in Delhi: one was for the release of Mufti's daughter, and the other was the chance to get rid of the incompetent, no-good, holidaying-in-London Farooq Abdullah. And one thing influenced the other.

I have to say that from the 11th to the 13th, when Rubaiya was finally freed, Farooq cooperated totally with whatever Mufti and Delhi wantedexcept for the point about releasing five terrorists. M.L. Kaul was the one who went and met Farooq with Mufti's message that all five terrorists had to be released, and Farooq was furious.

'How has it gone from one to three to five?' he asked. 'Even if it were my own daughter I would not release them.'

Yet he did call up Mufti, in my presence, because there was a lot of talk going around that Farooq was just not bothered about the kidnapping because it was Mufti's daughter; the usual Delhi Darbar nonsense. Farooq called up one evening and said, 'Look, we are doing our best, I a.s.sure you we will not allow anything to go wrong. Mufti Saheb, I am doing as much for your daughter as I would have done for my own daughter.'

The end of the story is that on 13 December, two ministers arrived: Inder Gujral and Arif Mohammad Khan. We had been talking to Delhi with regard to the negotiations till about midnight. It was still a stalemate. Seshan, who was still the cabinet secretary, read the riot act to Moosa. 'Enough is enough,' he said. 'We will tell you what has to be done. Tell your chief minister to fall in line.'

After all this, around midnight, we each left the control room to go home. Soon after I reached, however, I received a call that the two ministers were arriving. In those five days I think I slept a total of eight hours, and now I was told that these two ministers would arrive at five in the morning by special plane. No chance of sleep, I told myself, so I shaved and then lay down for a 90-minute nap. At around four I got ready and then realised that I hadn't informed Farooq yet. Farooq did not like surprises.

I drove by Farooq's gate and said, 'Doctor Saheb so rahe honge?'

'CM Saheb utth gaye honge,' the guard said. 'Namaaz ka time ho raha hai.' It was 4:30 a.m.

I told him to get Farooq on the phone. He came on the line and asked: 'h.e.l.lo, what are you doing?'

I told him the two ministers were coming, so I guessed he knew. 'So what if they're arriving?' he said. 'Why do you need to go to the airport?'

'The DIB is also coming,' I said, as IB chief M.K. Narayanan was with the two ministers.

'Bring them straight here,' Farooq said.

It was dark when the plane landed and the ministers said they wanted to wash up at the guest house. I said the CM has called you straight home, he's waiting for you, so we went to Farooq's house, and he took us to the hamam downstairs. It was around 6 a.m., and just about daybreak. As soon as we all sat down, Farooq said, why don't you hear it from the IB chief here in Srinagar. So I briefed them and gave the whole spiel in a nutsh.e.l.l.

Frankly, I don't know if Gujral and Arif came to Srinagar to genuinely listen to Farooq, or if they were just playing good cop/bad cop. Whatever Farooq would say, they would say, 'We didn't know this!' Whatever Gujral didn't like he would pretend he had not heard and he would tap his hearing aid. Arif would say something and Gujral would say, 'Kya kaha aapne?' The whole thing was a charade.

This went on for two hours, we drank three cups of tea, and then the two ministers took Farooq outside and told him, 'This is what is to be done.'

He said, 'Okay, you want to go ahead and release them, do it. But I want to lodge my protest.'

Farooq was a sharp cookie, he sensed that once V.P. Singh and company came, his days were numbered. He was just playing along.

But he clearly told them that if the government held out, Rubaiya would be released unharmed and without having to free terrorists. If the government caved in, it would burst the dam, and there would be no looking back for terrorists in Kashmir. 'We will have to pay for it,' he told the two ministers.

He proved right.

I had gone to see the Delhi team off at the airport and on the way back found that it had become Diwali. The entire city of Srinagar was illuminated and there were lots of boys going around and collecting money on the roads, collecting funds for the movement. It was now under way in right earnest. The whole mood in Srinagar had changed. Azaadi was now around the corner.

So, on 30 December 1999, during the hijacking episode of IC-814, when I arrived in Jammu to advise Farooq, he took one look at me and said: 'You again.'

Most people would be wary of raising their voice with the R&AW chief, but the chief minister was in a fury and for three hours he shouted at me.

'You were there during Rubaiya's kidnapping,' he said. 'How could you come back again?'

'Sir, I was solidly with you that time, but this time I'm with the government of India,' I said. 'Then I was pleading along with you. This time I'm pleading with you.'

'I said then that whatever you are doing is wrong, and I'm saying it again,' Farooq shouted. 'I don't agree with it.'

He experienced waves of anger. He would calm down and then he would start all over again. Calm down and start again. Then he was at it: how weak Delhi is, how big a mistake this is, what a bunch of b.l.o.o.d.y idiots, buffoons. It just went on and on and on. Part of it was theatre; when Farooq gets into it, he likes to milk the drama for all he can.

'Sir, there is no other option, this has to be done,' I told him.

He called up Jaswant Singh and gave him an earful. 'Aap jo bhi kar rahe hain, galat kar rahe hain.' He called others up in Delhi. He kept banging the phone down.

Then at the end he said: 'Those two b.l.o.o.d.y Pakistanis or whatever they are, I don't give a d.a.m.n. Let them go to h.e.l.l.' He was referring to Masood Azhar and Omar Sheikh. 'But I will not let this Kashmiri fellow (Zargar) go, he's a killer. He will not be released.'

'Sir,' I said. 'It will not happen without Zargar.'

'I don't care if it happens or not.'

Finally he said: 'Okay, I'm going to the governor and giving my resignation.'

I had figured something like this might happen, so I said: 'Sir, if you're going to the governor, then at least take me along.'

He was agreeable, so at 10 p.m. we went to see Governor Girish Chandra 'Gary' Saxena. Gary Saxena was also prepared since Farooq had sent an advance message that he was coming over.

'These fellows want these terrorists released and I've told the R&AW chief I won't be a party to it,' Farooq told his governor. 'I would rather resign, and that's what I have come to do.'

Gary Saxena, incidentally, was a former R&AW chief. He dealt with the situation extremely well.