Bharat Rakshak

Highly placed government sources said the RAW's addition to the list is aimed at giving it a legal cover for intercepting phone calls, e-mails and voice and data communication domestically.

On the questions of a citizen's rights and privacy, the Home Ministry had reiterated that law enforcement agencies could tap phones of any individual for security or operational reasons for 72 hours even without permission from the Union Home Secretary or the State Home Secretary.

But senior officials admit that the goof-ups have put a question mark on the integrity of the system which is not foolproof. They do not rule out the possibility of more innocent citizens being put on the list of suspects.

The government has directed senior officials from paramilitary and armed forces to refrain from flaunting their career details on social networking sites, or stay away from such sites altogether, after instances of cyber espionage came to light.

Sources said officials of paramilitary forces, posted at sensitive locations, were found chatting with foreign agents across the border posing as women.

Following a spate of similar incidents, meetings were held to prohibit the use of official computers for social networking on the internet and officials were sensitised on the latest modus operandi of the spies.

Sources in the Telecom Department said an effective mechanism was being put in place to keep a vigil on officials posted in sensitive areas.

In some instances, officials were found indulging in objectionable activities through video chat, recordings of which were later used by the spies to blackmail to extract strategic and commercial information. The errant officials have been removed from their current postings and departmental action has been initiated, sources said.

Some officials were seen posing in their uniforms, armed with AK-47 rifles and service revolvers, which they admittedly did for impressing women, sources said.

While the number of such incidents were more in paramilitary forces, few instances were also reported in the armed forces.

RAW becomes a dump yard for favourites

Once he became RAW chief, one of Chaturvedi's tasks was to act as a courier for cash sent abroad to the relatives of a prominent Indian politician. He used to accompany bags of cash taken from RAW's secret funds, sometimes even in diplomatic bags, handing over the stash in European cities to delighted relatives of the neta.

A former Union minister in a key portfolio was being harassed by the ED over a deal involving Iraq under Saddam Hussein. And when the former minister made private threats (four years ago) in the presence of a young major that he would expose the involvement in the "oily" scam of the son-in-law of a prominent lady politician, this conversation was quickly conveyed to the governor of a small northern state, whose ADC the military officer was. This elderly worthy promptly did his patriotic duty by informing the lady politician's political factotums about the danger of exposure of the son-in-law's dealings. Swift action followed, the upshot being that the former minister was freed from the attention of government agencies that were looking into his business dealings, followed by his grateful silence on the role of the son-in-law. P

The Governor of the states has two ADCs, one each from the army and the state police service.

Even as the role of the Indian military in giving birth to the new nation is celebrated, the role of its intelligence services remains largely unknown.

Forty-five minutes before 12.00 pm on December 14, 1971, Indian Air Force pilots at Hashimpara and Gauhati received instructions to attack an unusual target: a sprawling colonial-era building in the middle of Dacca that had no apparent military value whatsoever.

There were nothing but tourist maps available to guide the pilots to their target — but the results were still lethal. The first wave of combat jets, four MiG21 jets armed with rockets, destroyed a conference hall; two more MiGs and two Hunter bombers levelled a third of the main building.

Inside the building — the Government House — East Pakistan's Cabinet had begun an emergency meeting to discuss the political measures to avoid the looming surrender of their army at Dacca 55 minutes before the bombs hit. It turned out to be the last-ever meeting of the Cabinet. A.M. Malik, head of the East Pakistan government, survived the bombing along with his Cabinet — but resigned on the spot, among the burning ruins; the nervous system, as it were, of decision-making had been destroyed.

For years now, military historians have wondered precisely how the Government House was targeted with such precision; rumours that a spy was present have proliferated. From the still-classified official history of the 1971 war, we now know the answer. Indian cryptanalysts, or code-breakers, had succeeded in breaking Pakistan's military cipher — giving the country's intelligence services real-time information on the enemy's strategic decision-making.

India's Army, Navy and Air Force were lauded, during the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of Bangladesh's independence, for their role in ending a genocide and giving birth to a new nation. The enormous strategic contribution of India's intelligence services, however, has gone largely unacknowledged.

Seven months before the December 3 Pakistan Air Force raid that marked the beginning of the war, India's Chief of Army Staff issued a secret order to the General Officer Commanding, Eastern Command, initiating the campaign that would end with the dismemberment of Pakistan.

Operation Instruction 52 formally committed the Indian forces to “assist the Provisional Government of Bangladesh to rally the people of East Bengal in support of the liberation movement,” and “to raise, equip and train East Bengal cadres for guerrilla operations for employment in their own native land.”

The Eastern Command was to ensure that the guerrilla forces were to work towards “tying down the Pak [Pakistan] Military forces in protective tasks in East Bengal,” “sap and corrode the morale of the Pak forces in the Eastern theatre and simultaneously to impair their logistic capability for undertaking any offensive against Assam and West Bengal,” and, finally, be used along with the regular Indian troops “in the event of Pakistan initiating hostilities against us.”

Secret army

The task of realising these orders fell on Sujan Singh Uban. Brigadier — later Major-General — Uban was an artillery officer who had been handpicked to lead the Special Frontier Force, a secret army set up decades earlier with the assistance of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency to harry the Chinese forces in Tibet. The SFF, which until recently served as a kind of armed wing of India's external covert service, the Research and Analysis Wing, never did fight in China. In Bangladesh, the contributions of its men and officers would be invaluable.

Brigadier Uban — whose enthusiasm for irregular warfare was rivalled, contemporaries recall, only by his eccentric spiritualism — later said he had received a year's advance warning of the task that lay ahead from the Bengali mystic, Baba Onkarnath.

Less-than-holy war

The war he waged, though, was less-than-holy. In July 1971, India's war history records, the first Bangladesh irregulars were infiltrated across the border at Madaripur. This first group of 110 guerrillas destroyed tea gardens, riverboats and railway tracks — acts that tied down troops, undermined East Pakistan's economy and, the history says, destroyed “communications between Dhaka, Comilla and Chittagong.”

Much of the guerrilla war, however, was waged by the volunteers of the Gano Bahini, a volunteer force. The Indian forces initially set up six camps for recruiting and training volunteers, which were soon swamped. At one camp, some 3,000 young men had to wait up to two months for induction, although the “hygienic condition was pitiable and food and water supply almost non-existent.”

By September 1971, though, Indian training operations had expanded dramatically in scale, processing a staggering 20,000 guerrillas each month. Eight Indian soldiers were committed to every 100 trainees at 10 camps. On the eve of the war, at the end of November 1971, over 83,000 Gano Bahini fighters had been trained, 51,000 of whom were operating in East Pakistan — a guerrilla operation perhaps unrivalled in scale until that time. In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Brigadier Uban sent in Indian soldiers or, to be more exact, CIA-trained, Indian-funded Tibetans using hastily-imported Bulgarian assault rifles and U.S.-manufactured carbines to obscure their links to India. Fighting under the direct command of RAW's legendary spymaster Rameshwar Kao, Brig. Uban's forces engaged in a series of low-grade border skirmishes.

Founded in 1962, the SFF had originally been called Establishment 22 — and still has a road named after it in New Delhi, next to the headquarters of the Defence Ministry. The organisation received extensive special operations training from the U.S., as part of a package of military assistance. In September 1967, the control of these assets was formally handed over to RAW — and used in Bangladesh to lethal effect.

From December 3, 1971, Brig. Uban's force began an extraordinary campaign of sabotage and harassment. At the cost of just 56 dead and 190 wounded, the SFF succeeded in destroying several key bridges, and in ensuring that Pakistan's 97 Independent Brigade and crack 2 Commando Battalion remained bogged down in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Some 580 members of Brig. Uban's covert force were awarded cash, medals and prizes by the Government of India.

November 1971 saw the Indian-backed low-intensity war in East Pakistan escalate to levels Pakistan found intolerable — pushing it to act. On December 3, Pakistan attempted to relieve the pressure on its eastern wing by carrying out strikes on major Indian airbases. India retaliated with an offensive of extraordinary speed that has been described as a “blitzkrieg without tanks.”

.....

How important was the covert war to this victory, and what cost did it come at?

India's new communications intelligence technologies were clearly critical; three decades on, the government would be advised to make fuller accounts public, and publicly honour the anonymous cryptanalysts who achieved so much.

The 1971 war history records that their efforts meant “several important communications and projections of the Pak[istani] high command were intercepted, decoded and suitable action [was] taken.” Indian communications interception, the history states, even prevented a last-minute effort to evacuate the Pakistani troops from Dacca, using five disguised merchant ships.

The role of irregular forces, though, needs a more nuanced assessment. There is no doubt that they served to tie down Pakistani troops, and derail their logistical backbone. They were also, however, responsible for large-scale human rights abuses targeting Pakistani sympathisers and the ethnic Bihari population. There is no moral equivalence between these crimes and those of the Pakistani armed forces in 1971 — but the fact also is that the irregular forces bequeathed to Bangladesh a militarised political culture that would have deadly consequences of its own.

India's secret war in Bangladesh would have served little purpose without a conventional, disciplined military force to secure a decisive victory — a lesson of the utility and limitations of sub-conventional warfare that ought to be closely studied today by the several states that rely on these tactics.

The hackers claim to have discovered Symantec’s source code in a hack they conducted on India’s military and intelligence servers. In their online post, the hackers said, “We have discovered within the Indian Spy Program source codes of a dozen software companies,” which the hackers said had signed agreements with an Indian defense program and India’s Central Bureau of Investigation.

Have had discussions with some people in BD and WB regarding the current state of affairs. Pretty depressing when it comes to border management.......Forget TECHINT,....just getting HUMINT is becoming difficult due to rampant corruption in the intel set-up. Don't want to spill the beans here in this open forum for the sake of nat'al security, but this is something the country needs to pay attention at before another disaster happens.......

A Delhi court on Saturday framed charges against former Indian diplomat Madhuri Gupta for allegedly passing on sensitive information to Pakistan’s ISI. Additional Sessions Judge Pawan Kumar Jain charged Gupta under Section 3 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act for spying and also section 120B of the Indian Penal Code for criminal conspiracy. The court fixed March 22 for starting the trial.

She has been charged with breach of trust, criminal conspiracy and various other provisions of the Official Secrets Act. It was alleged that Gupta revealed certain classified information to Pakistani officials and was in touch with two ISI officials, Mubshar Raza Rana and Jamshed.

According to the charge sheet filed in July 2010, Gupta was involved in a relationship with Jamshed whom she planned to marry. She used to communicate with Jamshed who had a code name ‘Jim’.

China banking on Pakistan for India intel?

China banking on Pakistan for India intel?

For the past six weeks, an obscure Darbhanga-based leather-business owner has been at the heart of India's hunt for the men who planted three improvised explosive devices that went off in a crowded Mumbai marketplace last summer, killing 26 and injuring at least 130.

Naquee Ahmad has helped the Intelligence Bureau and the Delhi Police build images of the two Pakistani nationals suspected to have planted the bombs, and sat with under-cover detectives staking out the apartment they last used.

For his contributions, Mr. Ahmad has been rewarded with arrest on charges of obtaining a mobile phone subscriber identity card using fake documents — a case a top Mumbai Police official told The Hindu was “totally without merit.” His brother Rafi Ahmad has also been detained; their youngest sibling, Taquee, was questioned on Wednesday.

Mr. Ahmad's surreal fate, the outcome of a feud pitting Maharashtra's élite anti-terrorism unit, the ATS, against the Delhi Police and the Intelligence Bureau, demonstrates how India's national security effort is still mired in incompetence — three years after the tragic events of 26/11.

Key witness

Intelligence Bureau investigators first held Mr. Ahmad on December 9, following a series of arrests in New Delhi. The story he had to tell was consistent with what the authorities already knew: Mr. Ahmad was a key witness, not a suspect.

Late in 2008, an Arabic-language student, Gayur Ahmad Jamali, had fallen ill with a lung condition. Friends in Bihar introduced Mr. Jamali to an Ayurvedic physician called “Dr. Imran”. The two men became friends of sorts: “Dr. Imran,” Mr. Jamali told the police, would often advocate armed jihad as a means to retaliate against the oppression of Indian Muslims; he would argue otherwise.

“Dr. Imran,” the Delhi Police believed, was none other than Muhammad Ahmad Zarar Siddibapa — a fugitive Indian Mujahideen commander also known by the alias “Yasin Bhatkal,” and long sought by the authorities across the world for his alleged involvement in a series of bombings across India.

In November, Mr. Jamali had contacted Mr. Ahmad with a request: finding a room in Mumbai for his old doctor and two business associates. Mr. Ahmad, who often travelled to the city on business, helped as best he could. In November 2011, the three men made a Rs. 1,00,000-deposit with Razia Begum, to hire a one-room apartment at Byculla.

In testimony to the Delhi Police, which is available with The Hindu, Mr. Ahmad offered a wealth of detail on the two men he was introduced to as “Waqas” and “Tabrez.” He accompanied the two terrorists to a local gym, and got them supervising work at a construction site. He also identified “Waqas” from closed-circuit camera footage taken outside a store in Jhaveri Bazaar.

Mr. Ahmad's questioning had all but ended by January 7 — when the Delhi Police arrived on his doorstep with one last request for help.

In New Delhi, highly-placed government sources told The Hindu, Intelligence Bureau Director Nehchal Sandhu had been personally supervising the monitoring of a phone investigators had established was being used by “Dr Imran.” In an intercepted conversation in December, “Dr Imran” told his landlady that he wanted a refund of Rs. 84,000 that remained of the advance on the apartment at Byculla.

The Intelligence Bureau's Delhi centre faced technical problems in tracking the mobile phone, and so passed on its details to its station in Mumbai. Then, under circumstances that still haven't been clear, the top-secret number was passed on to the ATS.

Little understanding either the value or context of this information, the Maharashtra ATS promptly conducted a series of raids: Razia Begum was detained, the Byculla apartment searched, and Mr. Ahmad himself arrested in an effort to understand the case. Not surprisingly, the ATS action destroyed any hope that Mr. Siddibapa or his Pakistani aides might be found.

Maharashtra's ATS has long faced allegations of sharp practice, and worse. In 2008, for example, it failed to inform the Intelligence Bureau and other State police forces that it had held Mumbai criminal Afzal Usmani, who is being tried on charges of providing vehicles used to stage bombings in Ahmedabad in July 2008. The failure to share intelligence, Delhi Police sources have told The Hindu, facilitated a subsequent Indian Mujahideen strike in the capital that September.

HT Correspondent , Hindustan Times
New Delhi, December 27, 2011
First Published: 11:49 IST(27/12/2011)
Last Updated: 13:55 IST(27/12/2011)

With the Strategic Review Committee headed by Naresh Chandra expected to submit its report next month, the government is expecting the former cabinet secretary to recommend specific charters for Indian intelligence in order to avoid task overlap and one-upmanship among agencies.

Government sources said the 14 member committee was currently in the process of compiling the report with all the six sub-groups ready with their recommendations on border management, internal security, defence management and intelligence reform. The committee, set-up in June 2011, will submit its report in January 2012.

While the Committee will push for national security reforms, the government is hoping that Naresh Chandra will define mandates for intelligence agencies particularly the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the tri-service Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). Apart from presence of disgruntled elements within, the R&AW is often at odds with Indian diplomats and growing number of Intelligence Bureau posts abroad. Top officials feel that rather than focus on core intelligence collection outside the country, R&AW agents often play diplomats and tinker with country specific foreign policy.

The DIA, on its part, is a matter of serious concern to the national security managers as the post of Director General DIA has become a sinecure for Lieutenant Generals awaiting their next postings. The average tenure of a DG DIA is around one to one-and-a-half years with only defence attaches coming under its ambit. As the individual services intelligence do not share data with DIA, the organisation has become bit of an orphan.

With former R&AW chief KC Verma and former Intelligence Bureau chief PC Halder on the Naresh Chandra committee, the government is hoping to spruce up its intelligence gathering apparatus to meet the demand of ever growing consumers.

Remember this hilarious accusation? Well,it now has been revealed that it was true!

Quote:
""This is the first time we literally caught them red-handed in the process of contacting their agents here and received evidence that they finance a number of non-governmental organisations."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9022827/Russian-spy-rock-was-genuine-former-chief-of-staff-admits.html