CPI(M) demand: Investigate New Revelations on Purulia Arms Drop

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:

Investigate New Revelations on Purulia Arms Drop

The Purulia arms drop in December 1995 was one of the most serious instances of an assault on the country’s sovereignty. The investigations and the court trial had proved that the arms were meant for the Ananda Marg which was planning to use it to foment violence to destabilize the Left Front government.

The revelations by Niels Christian Nielsen alias Kim Davy, who is still absconding and Peter Bleach who was sentenced in the case, have raised new questions.

In the aftermath of the Purulia arms drop it was known that the British intelligence agency MI5 had informed RAW about the proposed airdrop in late November 1995. The then British Home Secretary had confirmed this in a press conference in Delhi on January 5, 1996. The RAW had alerted the Home Ministry and other authorities. Yet, the West Bengal Government was sent this information by registered post which reached after the arms drop.

· It was reported that the radar at the Kalaikunda air base was not operational at the time of the air drop.

· How was it that on the return trip from Phuket in Thailand the plane could land in Chennai and take off even when there was an alert on the aircraft.

· For more than a decade Kim Davy has been living in Denmark and the Central Government has been tardy in getting him extradited.

Kim Davy has given specific details of how he had escaped from the Mumbai airport and reached Nepal. He has named Pappu Yadav, who was then an MP, as the person who assisted him. It should be noted that the same Pappu Yadav is in jail serving a life sentence for the murder of CPI(M) MLA Ajit Sarkar.

Both Bleach and Kim Davy have made charges of connivance by certain Indian authorities in the airdrop plan and the cover up later.

All this information necessitates looking at the Purulia airdrop in a fresh light.

The existence of the Left Front Government in West Bengal has been anathema for many domestic and international forces. At present too, the spectre of violence is being used to destabilize the Left Front Government. Even the Union Home Minister recently talked of the “killing fields” in West Bengal and blamed the CPI (M) for it. On the other hand, the Maoist violence is being aided and supported by the Trinamul Congress which is part of the Congress-led government at the Centre.

It is essential therefore to thoroughly investigate the Purulia arms drop affair. For this the following steps have to be taken:

(i) Pappu Yadav should be interrogated and the trail by which Kim Davy escaped from the country should e uncovered and the persons responsible brought to book.

(ii) There has to be a judicial enquiry by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court into the circumstances of the arms drop in Purulia and to uncover the network responsible.

Buddhadeb demands judicial inquiry in arms drop case

PTI

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Friday demanded a judicial inquiry by the Centre into the “political conspiracy” behind the arms drop from a foreign plane in Purulia 16 years ago.

“A political conspiracy has been exposed in the media behind the arms drop 16 years ago. And in this context and in the interest of internal security and the gravity of the incident therein, I demand a judicial probe,” the chief minister said in a statement here.

Recalling the dropping of a huge cache of arms from a plane “meant for the Anandmargis” in Purulia at midnight on December 17, 1995, the Chief Minister said, “An alert message from the Union home ministry reached the state home department a few days after the incident.

“The Central alert of December 12 was dispatched to Kolkata from Delhi by ordinary mail in a very casual manner. No advance wireless message was sent to the state on an urgent basis considering the gravity of the situation. The mail reached after the arms drop in Purulia.”

Mr. Bhattacharjee, who holds home (police) portfolio, said the state government handed over responsibility of the inquiry to the CBI considering the gravity of the incident.

“All seized sophisticated arms were handed over to the CBI by the state police. All the seized arms since the days of inquiry were in the custody of the CBI,” he added.

Purulia: was West Bengal's LF regime the target?

By Marcus Dam

THE HINDU, 29th APRIL, 2011

The revelations to an Indian television channel on Thursday by Kim Davy, a prime accused in the arms drop case over the Jhalda area in West Bengal's Purulia district on December 17-18, 1995, and by Peter Bleach who served a sentence for his role in the incident, only go to indicate that various international forces have been colluding with those within the country in targeting and destabilising the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government in West Bengal.

They come not just as an eye-opener at a time when the Left Front is facing its most fierce electoral battle in recent times against an alliance of the Trinamool Congress and the Congress in the ongoing Assembly polls in the State; they also serve as a reminder to the electorate waiting to exercise its franchise in the coming three phases of polling — on May 3, 7 and 10.

What Mr. Davy has had to say in his interview to Times Now TV channel is, according to the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M), “further confirmation of the fact that there was a well-planned conspiracy to use violence to destabilise the Left Front at that time… Such moves are still on.”

Significantly, the arms drop occurred a year before Lok Sabha and Assembly elections were held in the State.

As the CPI(M) Polit Bureau observes “…it was a serious assault on India's sovereignty and a diabolical plot against an elected government [in West Bengal] and the Constitution.”

On being asked whether the Central government knew and had authorised the arms drop over Indian territory, Mr. Davy replied: “There were political forces at the Centre who saw it as an opportune way to further their political agenda.”

He continues: “You must remember that we are talking ancient history here, but in 1988 the Centre introduced Presidential Rule in Tripura [the Left Front was in power there in 1987-88] after engaging in supplying arms to different rebel groups there. The same strategy was announced publicly in the beginning of the 1990s that there was a decision to introduce Presidential Rule in West Bengal and therefore it was seen as a furthering of this agenda that arms were procured to protect local people.”

Startling exposé

The disclosures to Times Now by Mr. Bleach are more startling.

Asked what could be the motive behind dropping the arms in “Indian territory in such an illegal manner,” Mr. Bleach says: “To understand that you have to stop thinking of Indian territory. This wasn't dropped so much in Indian territory as in Bengali territory. The target here was the government of West Bengal. At that time, Jyoti Basu was the Chief Minister and the CPI(M) government was in power.”

“The whole objective [according] to my understanding was to destabilise the government of West Bengal so that President's rule could be declared in terms of the Constitution and the State would have been ruled directly from Delhi. That could have disposed the CPI(M) government and that was the entire purpose of the job as I understand it now. I didn't understand it at that time and I have to stress that,” Mr Bleach goes on to add.

As Biman Bose, CPI(M) State Secretary in West Bengal, says: “There have been moves to destabilise the Left Front government… There have been repeated demands for President's rule in the State; like the repeated efforts of the principal Opposition party in the State [Trinamool Congress] to get the Centre to impose President's rule in the State by engaging with the CPI (Maoist) in Jangal Mahal [in the south-western region of the State].”

Purulia arms-drop accused says operation was organised to bring down Left Front

Niels Christian Nielsen, a Danish national fighting extradition to India for his alleged role in the 1997 air-drop of ammunition over Purulia, has said the operation was sanctioned by the Central government to destabilise West Bengal's Left Front government.

In an interview to Times Now television, Mr. Nielsen claimed that the Purulia arms drop was organised as a form of defence against alleged oppression by the CPI(M) in West Bengal. The government of the former Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, he said, “saw and approved the plans to arm the defence of these innocent people.”

Central Bureau of Investigation detectives have been seeking the extradition of Mr. Nielsen, also known by the alias Kim Davy, saying he was the key figure in organising the drop of several hundred assault rifles, ammunition and explosives to help the murky Ananda Marga cult start an anti-communist insurgency.

Peter Bleach, a former British special forces officer who arranged for the purchase of the aircraft used in the operation, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2000, along with the Latvian crew. The convicts, however, all later received presidential pardon. In a separate interview to Times Now, Mr. Bleach backed elements of Mr. Nielson's case, saying “the whole objective, my understanding was, to destabilise the Government of West Bengal so that President's rule could be declared in terms of the Constitution [sic.] and the State would have been ruled directly from Delhi.”

Little is known about the 1961-born Nielsen, who is reported to be wanted in several countries on charges related to arms trafficking and money laundering. For years a member of the cult, Mr. Davy has also been linked to the South Sudan insurgent leader John Garang.

The CBI says that Mr Nielson met with Mr. Bleach at Copenhagen in August, 1995, and asked him to supply 2,500 assault rifles and 1.5 million rounds of ammunition. In September that year, the men met again in Bangkok, where the order was reduced to 500 assault rifles, as well as an aircraft for executing the drop over Purulia. Mr. Nielson succeeded in organising papers which persuaded Bulgaria to sell the weapons, which its authorities thought were intended for the Bangladesh armed forces.

Though sensational, Mr. Nielsen's claims are not new — and he has offered no new evidence in support of his claims.

In a 1995 interview to the British Broadcasting Corporation, he first asserted that the Indian government had deliberately overlooked intelligence warnings of the imminent arms-drop, hoping to precipitate an insurgency in West Bengal. “An armed insurgency in West Bengal would have allowed Delhi impose direct rule on the State and oust the ruling Communists,” the BBC reported him as saying.

Mr. Nielsen's claim that his escape was facilitated by the government was also made earlier by his organisation, the Ananda Marg. Bhaveshanand Avadhuta, a spokesperson for the group, said that it had “good reasons to believe Davy was escorted away by an Indian intelligence official called Dasan”.

But even though little evidence has emerged to support the claims, a succession of unexplained errors by Indian authorities has meant speculation about the operation has refused to go away.

Mr. Bleach, a retired special forces officer who ran an arms firm, had notified the North Yorkshire police of the planned arms drop in August 1995. He claims to have been asked to go ahead with purchasing the aircraft and continue providing information on the plot; British authorities deny this.

Later, in November, MI5, the British intelligence service, notified India that the arms drop was imminent. A London-based British government official involved with the case said at least three meetings took place to discuss events as they unfolded, though he would not share details. The West Bengal government was not immediately notified of the threat. Intelligence Bureau personnel, it later emerged, carried out reconnaissance at possible airstrips in the area, but no on-ground surveillance was mounted by the West Bengal Police.

Mr. Nielsen himself evaded arrest at the Mumbai airport, after the aircraft was finally forced to land by an Indian Air Force jet. Investigators say he bribed authorities at the airport to escape.

A senior CBI official also said Mr. Nielsen appeared to be seeking to “muddy the waters” at the final stage of extradition proceedings. “If he has anything to say”, the officer said, “we'd love to hear it — in court.”

THE HINDU, 29th APRIL, 2011