Ali Sukhanver
DURING their professional training, all security forces personnel are strictly forbidden to have any relationship with wine, woman and wealth in any case particularly when they are on a mission; these are the ‘booby-traps’ for them, they are told. And same is the instruction given to the secret-agents commonly known as the Spies. Unfortunately the spies and security personnel meet a very tragic ending when they ignore this instruction intentionally or unintentionally. We find the situation at its worst when we cast a look at the record-files of the Indian secret-agents and security personnel who somehow or the other were fenced into such booby-traps. No need of going far back, just look at the record-files of the last five years; there are countless examples of Indian army and intelligence officers who were honey-trapped by wine, women and wealth. It seems a part of their nature and temperament. The India Today said in a report, “In November 2014 the Ferozepur police arrested two Indian army personnel from the cantonment area on charges of conducting reconnaissance of the area. During the interrogation, it came to light that the accused had visited the Indo-Pak check post at Hussainwala twice, and they were in contact with an ISI agent Jaya Mishra, who had honey-trapped the accused separately.” The paper further said that the accused were identified as Shiv Narayan Chandravanshi, 43, and Arjun Malviya, 35, of Bhopal district in Madhya Pradesh. Earlier to this episode, on 30th August, the Pathankot police had arrested an Indian Air Force employee on charges of spying and selling strategic information about the air force station to a woman, believed to be a Pakistani spy.
The Sonipat police arrested a 22-year-old youth Gaurav Sharma on spying charges in April 2018. He was also working with the Indian Ministry of Defence According to media reports, he was in touch with two women who were allegedly ISI spies and whom he had met on Facebook. The arrested young man told the investigators that the women lured him with sex chat and later asked him to supply sensitive information about Indian defence forces. He further told that he was in touch with the spy-women for the last one-and-a-half years. Astonishingly the arrested youth is a son of a retired army havaldar and his mysterious activities were known to his father. The investigation agencies were really shocked when they checked the Facebook friend-list of these spy-women and found a lieutenant-general, three colonels, three majors, a captain, a commander, a sergeant, an NDA trainee and a jail superintendent in Jammu and Kashmir. ‘These officers are posted in various states like Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, New Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh,’ says India Today. From the Jodhpur railway station a few weeks back, two Indian soldiers were taken into custody. They were also accused of sharing crucial information with a Pakistan-based woman ISI agent. According to the details the jawans from the Indian army were going to their village from Pokhran when intelligence officials took them into custody. They were taken to Jaipur from Jodhpur where they are still being interrogated. The Indian investigation officials confirmed that jawans were sending crucial information after falling in a honey trap of Pakistani woman. All such news covey three different messages to the world; the first one is that Pakistan has a very strong ability of intruding the Indian boundaries; second is that the defence mechanism of India is so poor and so weak that anyone could destroy it and third message is that Indian army personnel are so weak in morality that they could sell their national secrets to hostile countries for sake of their trivial desires.
However the authenticity of all these incidents is called in question by different analysts. They are of the opinion that all these incidents of women-spies are nothing but intentionally concocted stories. Though never successful, but on the basis of these fishy stories, India has ever been dreaming of defaming Pakistan and creating hurdles for it at different international forums like FATF. In all such efforts of stamping Pakistan as a terrorism exporting country, India simply turns a blind eye on agents like Kulbhushan Jadhav who is now in Pakistani custody and his case has already been decided by ICJ in favour of Pakistan. It is not only Kulbhushan, there are countless other terrorists also who were sent to Pakistan by the Indian authorities to create law and order problems for Pakistan. According to a news report in the last few months Pakistan has arrested many RAW operatives involved in anti-state activities and their cases have been sent to the courts for further legal proceedings. However projection of such false-news items about Pakistani women-spies is a proof of Indian acceptance and admittance that Pakistan has a very strong rather ‘muscular’ potential of reaching and hitting the ‘heart-core’ of the Indian defence system.
—The writer is freelance columnist based in Multan.
