Be [very] careful what you wish for ...

Continuing from the previous blog: 

We had left our protagonist Gokul in possession of his wife Anuradha’s confession to her extra-marital dalliance and contemplating the imponderables – getting rid of his wife, hanging on to his dear two-year old daughter, squaring things with his father in law who was an ex-cop, getting together with Latha, Latha’s husband conundrum and so on.

 

First move, Gokul created another fake but convincing Facebook id of ASHA the astrologer. [Remember, he had been very successful with the fake identity of a ‘Baba” and obtained his wife’s confession of her affair?] He coined ASHA as an acronym for Astrology, Spirituality, Humility, Attention. This profile Asha also managed to gain the confidence of Anuradha over a series of emails. ‘Asha’ convinced Anuradha that if she posed nude with her paramour (student lover) and sent the photographs, she would perform a yagna (a fire-ritual) over them that would render Gokul a silent spectator and she could freely continue her love life without the hassle of a divorce, child custody battles and so on. Around end-2013, ‘Asha’ received photos of his wife with her lover in a shower in a hotel room. Anuradha had booked the room for arranging these photographs for ‘Asha.’ This is how Gokul managed a plethora of incriminating evidence against his wife, Anuradha.

 

Meanwhile, Gokul kept visiting Bengaluru to meet Latha. Finally, in 2014, he managed a transfer to Bengaluru and also took up residence in the same housing complex as Latha. The two families became friends, so much so that Gokul managed to get a duplicate key to the house of Latha and her husband, Saju Jose.

 

On June 27, 2015, Gokul, as ‘Asha,’ convinced his wife Anuradha to get thoroughly inebriated so that she would become eligible and receptive for the Mahayagna (grand fire-ritual). Anuradha consumed more than half a bottle of whiskey. Then Gokul murdered his wife by hitting her on the back of her head with a metal Ganesha idol. Mission accomplished, he went to sleep. After a short while, he got up, checked on the body of his wife and suspecting that she might still be alive, again bashed her on the forehead brutally and repeatedly with the idol to ensure that she was dead. He passed it off as an accident/suicide. Gokul had rubbed her head against a table to look like she had hit the table while falling. Around 4 AM, he started calling family, relatives and friends to inform them that there was a tragic accidental death. Although the local Police station was suspicious, his father-in-law (Anuradha’s father), receiving all the emails and photographs of Anuradha in compromising position from ‘Baba’ and ‘Asha’ was convinced that his own daughter was of loose character and actually vicious. Gokul must be having tremendous convincing powers and his father-in-law was certain that it was an accident/suicide. In fact, as the father-in-law had been a Deputy Superintendent of Police and argued with the local Police against any other theory, the case was closed as a suicide.

 

Although Gokul had managed to get close to Latha and her husband, he had not yet been successful in getting her to resume a full-scale romance with him or leave her husband, Saju Jose. Gokul created a fake identity in the name of Saju on Facebook and posted messages calling for jihad in the name of ISIS. Gokul also created for himself a third identity as the Archbishop of Bengaluru and started sending letters to Latha. In the initial letters, the ‘Archbishop’ advised Latha not to leave Saju. This earned the trust and respect of Latha who didn’t suspect anything. However, somewhere down the line in the exchange of letters, the ‘Archbishop’ started advising Latha to divorce Saju. The ‘Archbishop’ also wrote to Saju informing him that Latha had mentioned in her confessionals regarding her desire to leave Saju. Despite the ‘Archbishop’’s advice, Saju was not willing for the divorce.

 

Not succeeding in the ‘Archbishop’ ploy, Gokul bought a SIM card and started sending WhatsApp messages to Saju in the name of ‘Salman’ belonging to a terrorist organization. Using the duplicate key to Saju’s house, he managed to plant a lot of incriminating literature in Saju’s house. He also photocopied Saju’s documents (passport, photographs, etc.) and, using them, procured a SIM in Saju’s name. After all this was in place, he tracked the flights through the internet and sent these alarming messages to the airports from a mobile with the SIM in Saju’s name. The details of the flights were so specific that the authorities were bound to seriously act upon the messages. What he was counting on was that Saju would be promptly arrested and put away for life, leaving him and Latha to start a new life together.

 

As Saju happened to be out of town, Latha approached Gokul to accompany her to the Police station when summoned. He accompanied her faithfully and hid the phone with Saju’s SIM in the car. This location of the phone and the wi-fi he had used for sending the WhatsApp messages eventually gave him away. The murder charge was added to the original SUASCA charge.

 

I examined Gokul in Police custody at length and was amazed at the depravity of an extremely diabolic and intelligent mind. I was also impressed by the brilliance of the investigative skills of a young SP level officer of Bengaluru and his consummate interrogation technique. These were times when there was robust and seamless professional cooperation amongst Police forces of different states and the Centre – unlike now, when there are unending cop-vs-cop wars. 

Well, Gokul wanted to eliminate his wife and implicate his sweetheart’s husband and set about it meticulously over a period of five years. He got his wish and nearly got away with it but I don’t think he was any the happier for it. Last heard, Latha was going to testify against him in Court and hers might be the clinching evidence. Be careful what you wish for … because you just might get it! 

Be careful what you wish for ...

 

Every Police officer, in a career spanning over three decades, gets exposed to a large variety of crimes and criminals. In my entire career, the most diabolical crime I came across was not the Purulia arms drop case. It occurred when I wasn’t in direct Policing either. The investigation didn’t even involve me, except very peripherally.

In 2015, I was heading the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the regulator mandated to ensure against and counter any unlawful interference when you fly – hijacking, bombing, armed attacks and so on involving aviation. On September 4 of that year, a Friday, I was visiting Kolkata on tour and a service colleague hosted a dinner for me and some other colleagues at Tolly Club. It was fairly late when the party wound up. Basking in the afterglow of the enjoyable evening replete with food, laughter and banter, I was about to doze off at the Guest House when I was jolted awake by the phone ringing after midnight – every Police officer’s regular nightmare. Bengaluru airport terminal manager had received a series of disturbing WhatsApp messages. Seeing the messages, the party feel-good and any thoughts of sleep just went out the window. Here is an assorted sample:

 

·       ‘Islamic State Wins. Air France to Paris and Haj Flight to Jeddah will be blasted on air.'

·       ‘Third target for today: Lufthansa to Germany.'

·       ‘IS wins, will spoil India. Stop if you can Allah.'

·       ‘Get ready to see the fireworks above the sky today.'

·       ‘Three bombs kept at Airport Cargo sector are ready to blast at 3 am, IS wins.'

·       ‘You can't trace any of our men, at least try to trace the bomb.'

·       ‘Not for today, it will be tomorrow at 3 am.'

 

This was followed by similar messages at Delhi airport. The messages and some phone calls to various call centres started at around 1 AM and continued till about 5 AM on Saturday morning. They mentioned that six different and specified international flights taking off from Bangaluru and Delhi airports would be blown up and there would also be an explosion in the cargo area of Bengaluru airport. The messages and calls were very pinpointed and gave many details of the concerned flights. Interestingly, all these six flights had either just taken off or were preparing to do so. They included flights of Air France, Jet Airways, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, Saudi Arabian Airlines and Swiss Air.

 

My entire night was spent in tracking, supervising and organizing sterilisation of the planes, passengers, cargo and catering. Three of the flights were already just airborne and were recalled back. The remaining three flights were isolated on the ground. The elaborate procedure of disembarkation of passengers, unloading of luggage, thorough checking and sterilization of aircrafts, passengers, cargo and catering, etc. began. At the best of times, the drill takes at least about four hours. With so many flights under bunched threats, it was an endless nightmare. Total loss to aviation industry because of this was estimated at above Rs. 8 cr., and this was not counting the loss of the time value of the (mostly high-value) passengers because of the cascading delays caused by the disruption.

 

The Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru was an IPS batchmate and a good friend. I called him and requested him for registering the case under the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Civil Aviation Act (SUASCA) and for focused investigation so that BCAS could later pick up the investigation after the necessary notification. This particular Act is very stringent carrying a penalty of life-imprisonment and BCAS had achieved a good conviction rate under the Act in other cases. While the incident and countering it constituted my bread-and-butter in that particular assignment, for a city Commissioner of Police with myriad demands on his time and energy, I wasn’t sure how much priority the case would get. I’m afraid I nagged him quite a bit. Two days later, he informed me that the case had been cracked. He also told me that it was not a simple case of bomb threats but the threat calls were actually a by-product, a small link in an elaborate crime of extraordinarily gruesome proportions. It involved a grisly murder as well.

 

I flew out to Bengaluru post-haste and examined the arrested accused person at length. What I learnt stunned me.

 

After registration of the case, Bengaluru Police traced the telephone no. from which the messages and calls had originated to one software techie named Saju Jose and its location at residences in upmarket Fernhill Gardens in HSR layout, Sector VI, Bengaluru. However, Saju was not even in the city at the time the messages were sent. Police called his wife, Latha (name changed) for examination and she had no clue as to the messages or even the phone no.. However, tracking the location of the phone, the Police found that the movement of the phone was tallying with her two visits to the Police station but did not tally with any other movement of hers. After this, they closely examined a person named Gokul M G (37) who had accompanied her to the Police station on both the occasions as her husband was not around. Even though Gokul claimed complete ignorance, after sustained interrogation and a check on the wi-fi connection he had used to send the WhatsApp messages, a five-year diabolical plot involving complicated romance, spectacular intrigue, a brutal murder and the final denouement of six international flights being subjected to serious disruption came to light with Gokul as the criminal extraordinaire.

 

Gokul and and Latha were classmates since Class 12 until completing their Engineering course in Thrissur, Kerala in 2007. They had been intimate then but after the graduation, Gokul moved to Delhi and Latha went to Thiruchirapalli, both for higher studies. In Delhi, Gokul met another girl, Anuradha, a Ranchi based girl, fell in love and married her in 2009. Both worked in the IT sector. In the same year, Gokul’s ex-flame, Latha also tied the knot with another techie, Saju Jose, in an arranged marriage.

 

Soon after marriage to Gokul, Anuradha left her techie job and took up a teaching job. Gokul confessed that he used to work from 9 AM to 11 PM and, probably frustrated, Anuradha started having an affair with a student of hers. Gokul found this out when he chanced upon some lewd messages exchanged between the student and Anuradha. In 2011, Gokul came across his old flame, Latha on Facebook and resumed contact.

 

His wife Anuradha being devoted to Shirdi Sai Baba, Gokul created a fake email id of a ‘Baba.’ As ‘Baba,’ he started sending emails to Anuradha, gained her confidence and slowly got her to confess to her affair with her student. He must have been enormously convincing. In his guise as “Baba,” Gokul advised Anuradha to discontinue her extramarital affair. She did, but again after three months, she resumed her relationship. Obviously, she kept the ‘Baba’ informed about the twists and turns of her dalliances and emotions every step of the way.

 

Now Gokul was furious. He decided to get away from his wife and get his old flame Latha back in his life. These are not simple things. Or easy. The wife doesn’t just disappear. There is the whole matter of child custody – they had a two year old daughter whom Gokul did not want to part with. The father-in-law was an ex-Deputy Superintendent of Police. There was the small inconvenience of Latha not willing to get back with him and her husband not agreeing to a divorce either. However, in Gokul’s mind, these were minor errors in taste and everything can and would fall into place. Given time. He set about meticulously eliminating all the obstacles in the way, getting rid of his wife, avoiding a murder rap, squaring things with his in-laws, winning back Latha, the problem of Latha’s husband and so on. In his convoluted but systematic mind, these were just steps to be solved in an interesting puzzle and he seemed to foresee zero problems in getting to the end-point. It would not happen immediately. It would take time, enormous time – five years in this case – but, as they say, the vulture is a patient bird …

[To be concluded]

KK

 

For me, he is always KK – the name is K. Karunakaran Shukla. Going by the surname, I thought he was from up North somewhere. Turned out, he was from Tamil Nadu. Actual name was Karunakaran K. By adding Shukla, he got the benefit of some reservation. First, he became the first boy from his village to complete Matriculation. Then he became the first boy from his Taluk to finish graduation. And when he became the first boy from his district to join the IPS, he felt all that agony of a South Indian body and soul wrapped inside a North Indian name had been worth it. 

He was Additional S.P. in a district called Murshidabad with a very well–connected and very powerful S.P. called Manas Rakshit. The S.P. was very successful, very ambitious and very in with the ruling Party. His only complaint, expressed in private to many people – “Out of all the S.P.s in the whole state, why did KK have to happen to ME?” One day he rang up someone high up in the ruling party and poured his heart out regarding his Additional S.P. and pleaded with folded telephonic hands to kindly remove him – “Ek lo, ek Additional S.P. muft mein doonga!” Unfortunately, at that time, there was a lot of cross-connection. KK got a parallel connection and heard through the whole conversation. Next day, bright and early, KK was in the office of the S.P. in his crisp Khaki with a crisp salute. The conversation:

 

KK: “Sir, I heard you are not happy with my work.”

 

S.P.: “No, no, who told you? You tackled that riot situation well. Crime is coming down.”

 

KK: “Still Sir, I believe, you don’t like me.”

 

S.P.: “Who is spreading these rumours? Why should I dislike you?”

 

KK: “Probably, Sir, you think I am unbalanced.”

 

S.P.: “This kind of misunderstanding should not happen. There are always these mischief-mongers.”

 

KK: “Sir, I was the first boy from my village to finish Matriculation. Then I became the first boy from my Taluk to finish graduation. And after a lot of struggle, I became the first boy from my district to join the IPS. I am really trying to do a sincere job.”

 

S.P.: “Of course, you are. We all are very proud of you. Why should you have any doubts?”

 

KK: “Sir, yesterday, there was a parallel connection. You were telling Sumanto Babu that I am unbalanced, incompetent, unsavoury and must be removed…”

 

Earlier, IPS officers were not allowed to go for UN missions. Good tax-free money, little work, exotic locales but no IPS. In the early 1990s, there was just a small suggestion that IPS officers could also be considered for the UN mission in Liberia. KK grabbed the opportunity with both hands. All of us eight officers of Bengal cadre who had applied got selected but the West Bengal government suddenly realized that sparing so many officers at Additional S.P./ S.P. level would create a serious vacuum so they refused to release us. We tried and nearly gave up but not KK. In Bengal, no one attends office before 11 AM. Every single morning, KK would be at the door of Joint Secretary (Police) office at 1055 hrs, usher him into his own office and start with the story of how he was the first boy from his village to finish Matriculation … and so on and end with the plea to kindly release us. After about a week of this, the Joint Secretary was pissed off and asked KK whether there wasn’t some other important work for him to do as he was in a sensitive district and why he was pestering him every day on end. KK replied that he had a very important assignment but since going to Liberia was more important, he reported sick so that he could hound this Joint Secretary. Finally, in sheer disgust, the Joint Secretary gave in. Even then it was touch and go. When that chartered flight took off from Delhi airport with us on board, we finally believed that we were in fact going on a UN mission and a cheer went up for KK in the plane.

 

Because it was a UN mission in a war devastated country, we were given a special baggage allowance of 140 kgs. KK persuaded the authorities and managed to sneak in baggage weighing 160 kgs. I did not know how tough things could be and went in with 24 kgs and everyone thought I was a fool. When we landed in Liberia, there was a lot of jostling for the officers to get down as though they were the first men on the moon. KK managed to be the first to get down but was very disappointed. There were already people there so he felt cheated out of his Neil Armstrong moment. There was a further problem. NO COOLIE or trolley! Everyone had to lug his own stuff. I was the only one laughing at that moment. It was tough work, heaving all that baggage on to a pick-up van at a considerable distance. One bag of KK fell and broke and about 78 pickle bottles rolled out in 78 different directions. In a place and context like Liberia in the early 1990s, pickle was a very precious commodity. Each of us grabbed as many pickle bottles as possible and tried to run as far away from KK as possible. He chased some of us and finally caught up with me. He pulled rank and demanded his pickles back. I politely and firmly refused and then he told me how his wife had lovingly packed them for him and if I did not return them, divorce was a distinct possibility and there was also the little matter of his having been the first boy from his village to have passed Matriculation and … Finally, we negotiated down to 50 – 50. He was not so successful with the others.

 

I had not seen 10,000 rupees together in my life till then. Liberia offered 105 USD per day plus our salaries. Before we could be posted to our duty stations and rent accommodation, we were put up in an exploitative hotel charging about 70 dollars per day. Most of us were still happy because it was a temporary thing for about a week and even the balance money was fine but not so KK. His world appeared to have crashed all around him. I asked him about the problem and he said he had budgeted for 3 dollars of rent plus 2 dollars of food per day so that he would save at least a hundred dollars per day, else, it was not economical. Economical?!! I thought this was just polite small talk and did not realize how dead serious he was. One morning, he announced to the utter jealously of the rest of us at the breakfast table that he had found a hotel where three of them would be sharing a room for just 10 dollars per night and they were moving out. We the great unwashed bade them goodbye secretly wishing that they would get run over. At 2 AM in the morning, same night, there was a lot of commotion. We saw KK and the two others sheepishly lugging their trunks (KK with 160 kgs minus some of the pickle bottles) and such like on their backs walking back into the hotel. Apparently, that dream castle was a room in a red-light area hotel and some “clients” were trying to wake them up around midnight. Unfortunately, the original hotel did not have any spare rooms so they spent the night searching unsuccessfully for a hotel room elsewhere, all their luggage on their backs.

 

I took over a particular assignment from KK. In the course of the farewell speeches in my honour when I was leaving the assignment, some of my staff described me in glowing terms and some even ascribed some sort of divinity to little old me. I was getting more and more elated until I realised that everything was relative. Compared to KK, my illustrious predecessor, who was by now referred to as King Kobra by some, in certain lights, from certain angles, I was appearing a little bit of all right!

“He’s a walking contradiction,
Partly truth and partly fiction.”

 

 

[Like that song, this is part truth, part fiction and part wild exaggeration; a mish-mash

combination of different people who brightened my days at different points

of time. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is coincidental.]

Pray, do not mock me ...

 

In the IPS, a lot rides on what is called a charge posting. The postings prior to that are all supposed to prepare you for this big thing for which you are essentially recruited. This is the post of SP, DC, DCP, Commandant, etc. where a lot of autonomy vests in you and in a substantive sense, the buck stops with you. My first charge posting was as SP, Calcutta airport. In this post, my main remit was to prevent and counter a hijack.

Soon after assuming charge in 1995, I enquired as to whether Calcutta airport had seen any hijacking incident in the recent past. On learning that there was one incident of hijacking where a hijacked plane was force-landed at Calcutta airport in 1990, I thought I should go through the files to learn more about a real-life incident. What I read shocked me.

 

On November 10, 1990, a Thai Airways Airbus 300 (flight TG 305) was hijacked during a flight from Bangkok to Yangon (Myanmar) by two Burmese students (Ye Marn and Ye Htink Yaw) and forced to land at Calcutta airport. There were 221 passengers and crew aboard.

 

It was a Saturday. The hijacked aircraft landed at Calcutta airport in the afternoon. Coincidentally, the Airport Director at the time happened to have returned to Calcutta airport during my tenure after serving other postings in the interregnum. Immediately when a hijacking takes place, several Committees of escalating importance swing into action. A critical one is the Committee at the airport. A dedicated room with the required gadgets, equipment and resources is earmarked for the purpose. The Airport Director convenes this Committee which is headed by the state Home Secretary or a very senior officer. The Airport Director received the information at home and immediately rushed to the airport, a five-minute distance. He tried to convene the Committee. However, these were pre-cellphone days and further, the incident occurred on a holiday. The Committee Chairman was not home and could not be contacted immediately. The other key person, the SP, airport was also not home and he too could not be contacted. Some of the other members who could be contacted, assembled, but in the absence of the above two key persons, were completely at a loss as to what to do.

 

The hijackers sent a list of six demands for the Myanmar government, viz., the release of all political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi; the withdrawal of martial law and the abolition of all military tribunals; the reopening of the universities which were closed down after the 1988 military coup; handing over of power to the National League for Democracy which scored a landslide victory in the 1990 general elections, and so on. The hijackers kept waiting and waiting but there was no response.

 

It would be four hours before the Committee Chairman and the SP, airport could reach the airport. Meanwhile, the Burmese students, seeing that no one was responding to them or talking to them, suspected that there would be armed intervention so they called out to surrender, merely requesting a Press Conference. Thus, inadvertent inaction had a fortunate fallout. Even so, the situation lasted a good ten hours.

 

The contents of the file disturbed me greatly. These hijackers were young students with grievances against another country. Their demands also pertained to that country. The ‘weapon’ they used was a laughing Buddha statue wrapped in tissue paper with some wires protruding from it. They claimed it was a bomb but, in reality, it was innocuous. I shuddered to think what would have happened if they were hardcore terrorists armed with lethal weapons and with pressing demands for the Indian government. I rushed to meet the Airport Director who substantiated all that I had read and also filled in the gaps. I asked him whether the situation would be any better if, even as we were talking, a plane was hijacked and involved Calcutta airport. He responded with cautious optimism. I suggested we should visit the Committee Room. When we reached there, we found that no one seemed to know where the key was. It took one full hour to find the key and open the room. Upon entering, I found the room to be full of cobwebs with a thick layer of dust on all the tables and chairs. There were assorted landline phones some of which were hotlines to various authorities. Hardly any of them was working. All this shook me up.

 

I felt that the way out was to have regular mock exercises. Those days, cell phones were still some days away in the future but pagers had just arrived. I armed all the Inspectors and Dy SPs with a pager each and told them to rush to the airport in any available transport the moment they received a message of hijacking or certain other specified incidents on the pager. I also drew up a check list of who all needed to be contacted with their telephone numbers and sequence of contact and hung it up at each office.

 

Many years later, when I got to head the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the aviation security regulator for the 100 or so airports in the country, the first thing I checked was the frequency of the mock exercises. I found that only 10 % of the airports had conducted such an exercise in the previous year. I kept stressing on mock exercises. Most of my colleagues thought I was wasting time on something unimportant. Behind my back, they used to mock my mock exercises. However, I persevered and before I completed my tenure with BCAS, each single airport was conducting at least two such exercises per year and also mock-exercised for other contingencies like bomb threats, attack on the airport or aviation facilities, etc. under rigorous monitoring. It paid off in spades on at least two occasions including when Pathankot airport came under attack.