British journalist duo Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark have revealed that “corrupt local police officers” had helped four JeM terrorists sneak into the Pathankot airbase to carry out the attack.
The book is titled “Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of the R.A.W. and the I.S.I”. It reveals other details about Pulwama attack and Indian spy Kulbhushan Yadav captured by Pakistan.
Pathankot attack
The book reveals that corrupt local police officers” helped terrorists attack Pathankot air base.
“Indian allies, including corrupt local police officers, were suspected of scouting the airbase. One of these dirty cops had found an area where there were multiple vulnerabilities: the floodlights were down, and the C.C.T.V. cameras had no coverage. There was no surveillance equipment of any kind” the book, published by Juggernaut, says.
An IB officer who investigated the case told the authors that the “police officer or one of his collaborators had climbed up and attached a rope. The raiders had used it ”to heave over 50 kilos of ammunition, and 30 kilos of grenades, mortars, and AK-47s” used in the strike”.
The heavily armed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militants sneaked into the air base, killing six soldiers and an officer. Four militants were gunned down by the Indian security forces.
Pulwama attack aftermath.
According to the book National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) exchanged messages with top Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) including after the Pulwama attack.
According to the authors, ISI officials disclaimed all knowledge of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) attack in Pulwama within hours of the incident, which was apparently planned in Afghanistan’s Helmand, and not Pakistan.
Doval and Deputy NSA Rajinder Khanna disbelieved the Pakistani messages, however, and carried out the Balakot air strikes.
Kulbhushan Yadav
The authors conclude saying that Kulbhusha Yadav was an asset used by Indian intelligence but not an officer. The book says that ISI laid a trap for Yadav to lure him to Pakistan and eventually caught him.
India has flatly denied those charges, and said that Mr. Jadhav retired from service in 2001 and was kidnapped by Pakistani agencies in Iran.
However, the book says many Indian intelligence agencies had shown interest in recruiting Mr. Jadhav due to his access from Iran to Pakistan, and that he was lured by the ISI to Karachi to meet a Baloch contact.
In the book, the authors, who had rare and unprecedented access to India’s national security establishment, refer to themselves as a “Gavrilov channel”
While Indian officials were hesitant to provide access at first, the authors said they yielded to the possibility of receiving near real-time information from Pakistani intelligence, given the almost frozen lines of communication at the time.
The book, Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of The R.A.W (R&AW) and I.S.I, which is releasing this week, traces the career of Mr. Doval through the past few decades, especially from the 1999 Indian Airlines’ flight IC-814 hijack, which the NSA describes as a “diplomatic failure”. It also highlights 2000 Parliament attack, and more recently events in Kashmir. Further it includes the 2016 Pathankot and 2019 Pulwama attacks in which 40 personnel were killed, as well as the retaliatory Balakot strikes by the Indian Air Force.
(Featured image design: Faizan Wani, Taarukk Media)
