K Sankaran Nair – The legendary spymaster of RAW

Shanks - The sleuth from Ottapalam

This is another name most of you may not have come across, Sankaran Nair was the man who headed RAW some time ago, the very man who left the unit in a huff after a tiff with Morarji Desai. Today you can switch on Hotstar and watch a debonair Kay Kay Menon play the role of the sleuth named Himmat Singh (Tele Series – Special Op’s), a RAW section head with a large overdraft account, totally at home with the latest technology and taking on the Pakistan ISI. Should you ask KayKay if he knew KS Nair, he might even be flummoxed. Anyway, I will try to fill you in on some background about Nair as we go through interesting high-profile cases involving him such as the Kahuta affair (which Morarji botched up during his loose and indiscrete chat with Zia) and the liberation of Bangladesh. It would be fitting, for this is the 50^th year anniversary of Bangladesh’s liberation.

Nair, never mincing words or wanting to paint a picture of his larger-than-life, had this to say about himself (after Dryden) – I have been a cop, a spook, and ambassador, but mostly a buffoon, I guess!

Kinattinkara Sankaran Nair, the man who so desperately wanted to join the ICS, but could not clear the exams even after two attempts, later went on to excel working for the police and win a Medal for Meritorious Service. Why on earth would he use the operational cover name Col Menon? All of these present an interesting story, the story of a proud and self-righteous man who served many bureaucrats, but on his terms while sleuthing in the IB and later for the Indian Research and analysis wing - R&AW.

Born on 20^th Dec 1920, (101 years ago to the day, as I post this) to Lakshmikutty Amma and Narayanan Nair, Sankaran Nair schooled in Convent schools at Trichy, Vizag, Cannanore, and Madras, but had to abandon plans of getting into the merchant navy through HMS Dufferin (negated by parents), before joining for higher studies at the Loyola college Madras, and later graduating from the Law college, around 1942. Many luminaries like Bobby Mugaseth, the Calicut Parsi, and Manek Cashu Dadabhoy, later Bobby’s brother-in-law (their story is beautifully narrated by Raghu Karnad in his fascinating book - Farthest field), Lambert Franklin, P Mukundan, and so on were his batch mates. Meanwhile, Sankaran Nair’s fleeting mind tried to take him to different vocations - a pilot (was negated by his mother), then an engineer which he himself gave up due to its math requirements. Not a bookish youngster, Nair was a keen cricket player, captaining Loyola.

Nair joined the Imperial police at Vellore, after failing to secure an ICS spot despite multiple attempts, moving on to become an Assistant superintendent in 1942. Pretty soon this tough cop was serving in Andhra, as the DSP for East Godavari and earning a ‘tough cop’ name after the capture of a number of criminals and Maoists using unique and sometimes very direct methods, instilling fear in a hitherto lawless territory.

By 1950, he was bound for Delhi, to serve under Bhola Nath Mullick in the IB – Intelligence Bureau (it was previously the Thugee office!), having been promised a post in Paris. That was not to happen and Mullick tried to move him to Burma which Nair refused demanding that he be sent back to the police cadre at Madras. After some years, he was deputed to create an intelligence agency in Ghana, when his predecessor and confidante Ramji N Kao had given him the required fillip. Returning to Delhi in 1963, he took over the Pakistani desk at the IB and was soon an authority on the ways and happenings across the borders, working through a network of informers.

During the 1965 war, Nair informed the army about the extra armored division Pakistan had secreted (without US knowledge) as well as other details of the impending assault, but the top brass refused to believe the IB report (commenting that Patton tanks can’t operate in sandy areas). According to Yadav’s book, it was only due to the bravery of other officers who defied the general, that a debacle like 1962 did not occur, when the tanks appeared. After the 1965 war, when an attempt was made to discredit him, but Nair was not cowed (or flattened like VK Krishna Menon had been), he sent copies of the 65 reports he had provided, to the PMO, disproving them.

In 1968, the R&AW was formed and he moved along with Kao as his deputy there. His work in RAW has been chronicled by his peers and successors, in many an article and a few books. Nair’s involvement in uncovering Pakistan’s nuclear research at Kahuta, obtaining the advance information of Pakistan’s bombing plans in Dec 71, the training and arming of the Mukti Bahni as a prequel to the 1971 war of liberation, are just some of the feathers in his cap. Nevertheless, due to personal differences with Sanjay Gandhi, he was not chosen as the successor of Kao and one Shive Mathur took his place.

But when Morarji Desai managed to finally plant himself in the PM’s chair, Nair faced a multitude of problems. First, he, Kao and the RAW was accused of being the hammers for Indira Gandhi during the emergency. Furthermore, Morarji was hell bent on finding dirt on Indira, digging deep to uncover apparent mismanagement of funds, if only for political purposes. The very same Morarji who had scuttled any chance of strengthening the Indian army by denying them the required financial budget before the 1962 China war, was back with a vengeance against the Congress.

Nair headed the RAW for just 3 months in 1977 after Kao’s retirement, before Morarji hounded him out and decimated the rank and lines of the RAW. Nair’s involvement in ‘Operation Casino’ identifying the kickbacks, so also his refusal to close down operations abroad including Pakistan as ordered by Morarji, resulted in the furious PM demoting Nair. That was the last straw and the illustrious spymaster left RAW for good, in 1978. However, Nair did play a smaller role in restructuring R&AW after the return of Indira Gandhi to power in 1980.

A number of lesser posts followed, but at each juncture, he refused to tread established lines and support sycophancy. He worked with the minorities commission, and finally with the organization of the Asian games 1981-82 skillfully and received a Padma Bhushan for it. His last posting was as the high commissioner of Singapore. By 1988 he had retired and moved first to London and thence to Bangalore, and after a lonely period and undergoing two bypass surgeries, Nair passed away in 2015, aged 96.  Seeing Kashmir getting manipulated to become a hotbed for insurgents, the Kargil conflict in 1999, followed by the 2002 parliament attack, and later the 2008 Mumbai attacks, were all events that would have got this aging snoop, furious.

Many of his action-filled days are fleetingly mentioned in his own memoirs, bereft of any details, so also in the book on Kao and in the few on the RAW itself by others. In almost all of them, Nair is a shadow, Col Menon, behind the curtain. So many interesting personnel passed by through those pages as I perused them, one being the senior police officer Eric Stracey whom I had mentioned in a previous article (the article about Cyril Stracey). Other interesting events dot his memoirs,  his attempts at learning how to glide, his fondness for Siamese cats, and how golfing became a passion.

Let’s now see how he and his team engineered some of the more famous intelligence coups of his life, though one must note these things are never individual exploits and that one’s actual role is in later accounts is always quite diffused. But as Raman introduces him, this suave, blunt in words and ‘hard-hitting in action’ RAW officer, was well respected and considered a master of HUMINT. As the years rolled by, as TECHINT and ELINT took over, technology exchanged places with brave humans out in the field, though wisely not replacing them entirely. It was no longer Nair’s domain, and his move out, perhaps a wise choice.

The arming of the Mukti Bahni and the Agartala Case

The role of Indian intelligence in the Agartala case which was a prelude to the 1971 war and the liberation of Bangladesh is briefly known, though not necessarily the R&AW machinations behind the scenes. The key person who worked behind the scenes in 1967, before the uncovering of the case, the elusive Colonel Menon, was none other than Sankaran Nair. A meeting was convened in Agartala sometime in 1962-63, between the IB foreign desk operatives and the Mujib faction. The Bangla group indicated to ‘Col Menon that the ‘group’ was eager to escalate their movement. Nair and his team thus became involved with organizing the arming and training of the Mukti Bahni.  Working under the cover of Col. Menon, he succeeded in creating a group comprising a few Bangladeshi Navy employees as well as other activists of the Awami League. Nair was planning the next step of arming them, but these agents in a moment of unnecessary haste tried to raid the Pakistan Army armory on their own. They were arrested and a sedition case named the Agartala Case was registered. Directly implicating Mujibur Rehman later in 1968 was a ploy engineered by Ayub Khan the Pakistani PM. This was later dubbed as the Agartala Conspiracy Case. The case was later withdrawn on 22 February 1969, after one of the accused, Sgt. Zahurul Haq of the air force was shot dead in prison. Nair admitted to handling various agents during the Bangladesh freedom struggle but reconfirmed that he never met Sheikh Mujib, famously known as Bangabandhu.

The case had huge repercussions. Some 1,500 Bengalis were arrested in this connection. The West Pakistani government’s keenness to prove that Sheikh Mujib was an Indian agent and a separatist backfired and a mass movement erupted demanding immediate withdrawal of the case and the release of all prisoners. The news of the killing of air force officer Sgt. Zahurul Haq led to riots and eventually, the government withdrew the case.

R Yadav in his book states - Sankaran Nair was working undercover as Col. Menon. Nair confirmed that P.N.Ojha, a Deputy Central Intelligence Officer of IB was his junior who was interacting with these East Pakistanis which included some Navy employees, Police officers and some political activists of Awami League party. Nair met these agents on border near Agartala few months prior to their arrest in East Pakistan. These agents were warned by Nair not to raid the armory to capture arms from the Pakistan Army, which they did after some time. Rather, Nair suggested to them that IB would send arms to them on a barge down the river from Agartala and they could collect these arms at suitable destinations for the insurgency against Pakistan Army. Nair also suggested them some separate ideas for their insurgent activities but they were aggressive and wanted some immediate action against the Pakistan Army. They ignored the warning of Nair and raided the armory which resulted in their subsequent arrest and this sedition case named as Agartala Conspiracy case was filed against them by the Pakistan Government.

Yahya Khan took over, became the dictator of Pakistan, and surprisingly held open elections only to find the rebel Mujibur Rehman winning most of the seats, 141 of them and talking about secession from West Pakistan.  Not something they or friends from the Western world wanted. Yahya ordered the terrible operations - Blitz and later Searchlight in East Pakistan, to suppress dissent using the army, which led to many atrocities, massacres, and a massive exodus of some 10 million refugees into India.

At that point in time, the R&AW team again provided intelligence to the insurgency’s policymakers, training the freedom fighters and creating training camps, also publicizing the Pakistani massacres and the plight of the refugees and supplying rebels the Mukti Bahni, with small and medium weapons. All-out war between India and Pakistan, to liberate Bangladesh, then took place in 1971.

Incidentally, the involvement of MKB Nair in Bangladesh is sometimes confused with SK Nair’s (both were RAW officers) role. Brigadier MBK Nair was the head of RAW’s technical division. According to Yadav - Brig. Nair opened many monitoring stations of R&AW at these check-posts and inside the Pakistani territory also to provide speedy information to the Calcutta office of R&AW and to its headquarters in New Delhi about the training of Mukti Bahini cadres and movement and action of the Pakistan Army. R&AW prepared a technical network and encircled East Pakistan on all vantage points which proved of strategic importance for the phase one action, to train the insurgents, of the Indian Government and ultimately in the decisive liberation war of December 1971.

Pakistani Mole handler – The Dec 1^st SNAFU

Nair, as we read before, was in charge of the Pakistan desk while at the IB. He had built up a network of moles and informers within Pakistan and during the tense situation in 1971, he received word from a mole in the last week of November 1971, that the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) intended to launch a pre-emptive strike on Indian airbases during the evening of December 1st. Nair sent the words to the high command but nothing untoward happened on the 1st nor the 2nd. An irritated IAF, having kept the pilots on high alert for 48 hours wanted to call it off, but Nair asked them to hold on since he was quite sure that the attack was coming.

The Pakistani’s launched their attack on the evening of December 3rd, which was quickly thwarted by the IAF who had been waiting. It was later discovered that the coded message from the mole had stated the date as December 3rd, but the decoders in the R&AW headquarters had incorrectly decoded it as December 1st!

The Kahuta affair

Kahuta in Rawalpindi was where Project 706 i.e., the Khan laboratories were set up to develop Pakistan’s enrichment units between 1972-1983. When Pakistan started to stockpile Uranium, the US responded with sanctions, but with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the US needed Pakistani support to reduce any communist insurgency. Even though Pakistan crossed the enrichment threshold with Chinese assistance in 1980, it was not until much later in the 90’s, i.e., after the Russian withdrawal, that the US reimposed wide-ranging sanctions.

As the story goes, RAW operatives in Pakistan obtained leads about the Kahuta facility and were surveilling scientists. They collected hair samples from local barbershops which were frequented by these scientists and got the samples across the border to India. Test results proved that these samples exhibited radiation making it clear that Pakistan was operating centrifuges.

Tragically this coincided with the fall of the Indira Gandhi government and the arrival of Morarji on the scene. Kao was gone, and soon Nair followed his steps, leaving the R&AW for good. The new government did not support further steps. Morarji did not want any interference in Pakistani internal affairs and denied support. Also, in an unguarded moment when talking to Zia ul Haq, Morarji Desai revealed that India was aware of the enrichment happening at the Kahuta facility. This had disastrous effects, Nair’s highly placed agents were captured, and created a huge setback for RAW operations.

Operation Casino

During the Indira government, the responsibility to hand courier a 6 million dollar check to be deposited in a numbered account in Geneva, was entrusted to KS Nair. Originally, he was asked to carry five suitcases of $100 currency notes, but he refused, fearing its and his safety. This was organized by the ministry of external affairs after clearance by the finance ministry and the PM.  Nair flew to Geneva and had the check deposited, but had no clue what it was for, until much later, at which point it had become a scandal. Morarji had become the PM and he was hunting for the skeletons in the many closets around Delhi. Assuming that Nair was Indira’s henchman, sent out to deposit Sanjay’s ill-gotten wealth, Morarji launched an investigation after Luther of the RBI hinted to him that it was Sanjay Gandhi’s money.

Nair (as stated in his memoirs) got to know the reason at this juncture, and found out from his finance ministry counterpart that the deposit was actually a kickback to an Iranian financier who had with the help of the sister of the Shah of Iran, brokered for India a 250M$ soft loan (India was facing sanctions after the Pokhran test), and had it tagged it together with the loan for the Kudremukh iron ore plant, to tide over India’s foreign exchange crisis.  Anyway, the case was closed in parliament, without further inquiries being made into the matter

I am sure there are many more stories that have not been told, but I think we can conclude with all this that Nair was an upright administrator, a keen intelligence agent, and a splendid complement to Ramji Kao during their years. As Hormis Tharakan who later headed the R&AW stated in an interview with ‘The Week’ - Kao and Nair were two personalities totally different from each other. However, they got along splendidly and complemented each other. Kao was suave, perfectly turned out, highly religious, soft-spoken, a teetotaler and an introvert. Nair was tough and rough, and did not mince words. Though he had a great sense of humor, he did put the fear of God into his subordinates. The planner and the implementer together built up a great organization in no time, overcoming apparently insurmountable difficulties.

On the day we completed our training, Nair came to address us. He asked us if we had assimilated all the dirty tricks we had been taught. We said yes. Then he told us, with the gravitas that he summoned whenever needed: “You shall never use these tricks in pursuance of your personal needs. These are meant solely to be employed in the service of the nation.” Operationally, there was no one to match Nair in the organization. He commanded much respect internationally, too, in the shadowy world of spooks.

Nair after his posting as the Indian High commissioner to Singapore spent his last days after 1988 in London and later at Bangalore. Nair who called himself with dry sense of humor and self-deprecating style - ‘the idiot I am, the rolling stone which gathered moss’, passed away aged 96, in 2015.

As for the people of Ottapalam, I doubt if any of its youngsters today have the slightest idea of who Shanks, the master spook was. Maybe this little article will tell them.

References
Inside IB and RAW – K Sankaran Nair
Mission R&AW – RK Yadav
R.N. Kao: Gentleman Spymaster – Nitin Anant Gokhale
Inside RAW: The Story of India's Secret Service – Asoka Raina
The Kaoboys of R&AW – B Raman

 

Pic – Courtesy @maverikmusafir - Twitter, Dec2020