THE NIGHT IT RAINED GUNS

Author  : Chandan Nandy

Publisher : Rupa, Rs295

This book places before us extensive material and informed interpretations of the Purulia arms drop case, leading us to the inescapable conclusion that there had been security lapses, says RAJESH SINGH

The Purulia arms drop case has become one of the country’s most enduring mysteries, thanks to a combination of lack of political will to get to the truth and sloppy, half-hearted investigations. The entire country knows that on the night of December 17-18, 1995, a foreign aircraft dropped loads of arms and ammunition at Purulia, a remote village in West Bengal unknown even to most people in the State.

The country also knows that, four days later, operation mastermind Kim Davy aka Niels Christian Nielsen coolly walked away from a Mumbai airport after the plane used for the airdrop had been force-landed at the airport. The people are aware of the identity of the other men who were directly and indirectly involved in the operation. Yet, nearly 20 years later, the case is far from being cracked. Nobody seems to know for sure who the beneficiaries of the arms were - the initial theory pointed to the Ananda Marg operating in the State then, but it has never been substantiated. Strangely, the zeal to unravel the mystery has simply gone missing. In fact, as far back as five years after the incident, the authorities had virtually washed their hands of the issue.

Yet, even today, off and on, we hear reverberations of the case, with authorities concerned making the formal remark that they would try to get Davy to stand trial in India. The problem is: Over the years, probe agencies failed to build a credible case out of the ample material they were in possession of. It is doubtful if their endeavours will succeed. And even if Davy gets extradited to India, will the evidence stand up to lead to a convictionIJ

All of this makes it more important for the people of this country to continue to question the arms drop incident, and keep questioning until we see some progress from the authorities concerned. A country that allows a security lapse of this magnitude to be swept away by the passage of time is doomed to endure a similar, and as or more costly, breach. To this end, therefore, the recent nationwide release on television of a documentary film on the incident is welcome. At the very least, it has revived the debate on the arms drop: The Why; the How; and the Who. The How is now fairly known; it’s the Why and the Who that remain unresolved.

Journalist and author Chandan Nandy does not attempt to offer definitive answers to those questions in his very readable and sensationally-titled book, The Night it Rained Guns, because, as he admits, he did not have the financial and other resources to research the incident whose tentacles are spread in various parts of the world. Even so, he places before us extensive material and his informed interpretations — all of which lead us to the inescapable conclusion that there had been security lapses (deliberate or unintentional), and that there had been put in place a strategy to downplay those lapses.  

The ease with which Davy escaped from the airport after his plane was force-landed in Mumbai is evident from the account the author provides. It also demonstrates the utter callousness of the agencies that ought to have been alert days after the arms drop incident. Nandy writes, “He picked up his document folder, which contained dollars in cash, and the aircraft documents, which he had always carried to air traffic control wherever the aircraft had previously landed. He calmly checked the contents, took some money out and left the aircraft.”

Funnily enough, all through the 45 minutes when Customs officials checked the aircraft after Davy stepped out, Davy’s accomplice and accused Peter Bleach was present. Even he had not then imagined that Davy could have simply walked off so freely and then gone into thin air as far as the Indian officials were concerned. It was when, even after more than an hour, Davy didn’t return, that the authorities began interrogating Bleach. The story he gave thereafter unravelled the mystery - but only to an extent. After all, the key accused had given them all a slip.

That Davy was certain he had nothing to fear appears clear from the author’s narration of the moments before the plane touched ground at the Mumbai airport. Nandy reconstructs the scene in the following words, “Once the aircraft began to lose height and the approach for landing started, Bleach joined Nielsen (Davy) in the cargo compartment. Nielsen looked worried, but definitely not pack-stricken. He opened his briefcase, went through it in an orderly fashion and extracted a number of papers.

These he tore into small pieces and threw the shredded papers into a galvanised steel bucket in the aircraft. He then added a little bit of solvent and burnt the pieces. When the burning was completed, he added some water, turned the whole lot into a paste and flushed it down the toilet. Next he took three or four floppy disks… and broke them into pieces. He borrowed Bleach’s lighter, applied the flame to the internal disks and completely destroyed them. By the time this was finished, the plane’s rear wheels had the touched the runway.”

Nothing much happened after Davy’s disappearance until the Central Bureau of Investigation got into the act. From the author’s account, the CBI did a fairly decent investigation, at least until the level that it could with the resources at its command and far enough the political establishment allowed it to. Joginder Singh, who took over as Director of the probe agency soon after the incident, had once remarked that the CBI had led to many trails but they were never pursued because of the lack of political will.

This is perhaps because the CBI discovered serious lapses on the part of several Government agencies. Nandy observes, “Three years into its yet-to-be-completed investigation, the CBI prepared a classified note to identify, establish and hold responsible government agencies and senior officers for their lapses that led, by all accounts, to one of the most bizarre and, admittedly, a spectacular operation to breach India’s security. The CBI justified its indictment of the agencies involved — the Cabinet Secretariat, the IB, the MHA, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the Ministry of Defence, and the Indian Air Force — but at no point in time did successive Governments… take steps to prosecute the individual officers involved… Instead of being cashiered, they continue to draw pension.”

Chandan Nandy probably knows what he talking about when he says, “Nielsen knows a lot more than he has penned in his book (which is strewn with lies, half-truths and cover stories) or spoken over Indian television or the Danish media. I am certain, as were Interpol and CBI officers, that Nielsen enjoyed the protection of the Danish authorities.”  The question, therefore, is: Will we ever see a closure to the Purulia arms drop caseIJ