'Babri demolition could have been prevented under Prez rule'

NEW DELHI: The demolition of Babri Masjid could have been prevented had the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao imposed President's Rule in Uttar Pradesh and banned the gathering of 'Hindutva' workers in Ayodhya as advised by all intelligence agencies, a top former intelligence officer has said.

BJP leader LK Advani kept meeting Rao at the latter's request and was 'assuring him that there would be no damage to the Masjid.'

"A Hindu religious leader, who had some friends at the senior levels of Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) repeatedly cautioned that Rao should not trust any assurances given by Advani. He expressed his fear that the Hindutva volunteers might demolish the Masjid," B Raman, former Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, says in his book, 'The Kaoboys of R&AW - Down the Memory Lane'.

These warnings were conveyed to the then prime minister orally.

He says Rao first requested for a R&AW guest house where he could meet Advani instead of his official residence. But later, he asked the R&AW to 'give him a secret recording device and explain to him how to use it. He wanted to use it for recording his discussions with Advani in his house.'

"After the demolition of the Masjid, he returned the device to the R&AW. He did not say whether he had used it and, if so, what happened to the recording. Nor did the R&AW ask him," the former intelligence official said.

Raman said it goes to the credit of the Intelligence Bureau, R&AW and the Home Ministry that they kept urging Rao to 'prevent the assembly of Hindutva volunteers in Ayodhya, dismiss the UP government, impose President's Rule in UP and deploy central paramilitary forces to prevent any law and order situation.'

But when the December 6, 1992 demolition was followed by the March 12, 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, 'neither the Mumbai Police nor the IB not the R&AW had the least inkling of it. They had misread the post-demolition riots as one of those disturbances'.

Elaborating on the post-blasts activities by the security establishments in the Centre and Maharashtra, Raman said the R&AW managed to procure photocopies of flight manifests of Pakistan Airlines (PIA) by which the perpetrators of the blasts had travelled from Dubai to Karachi for being trained by the ISI and then returned from there.

The external intelligence agency also collected evidence that the Pakistani Consulate in Dubai had issued visas on plain papers to them so that there were no entries in their passports regarding their travel to Pakistan.

"On their arrival in Karachi, the perpetrators were received by ISI officers at the tarmac and driven out of the airport without their having to pass through immigration formalities," Raman said.

The R&AW also intercepted communications originating from Dubai, Karachi and Kathmandu regarding the escape of the perpetrators after the blasts.

"There were reasons to believe that some of the intercepted conversations of the perpetrators were with Dawood Ibrahim himself in Karachi."

Maintaining that US and Austrian help was sought regarding the explosives used in the Mumbai blasts, he said American experts examined the bomb-timers and ascertained that they were produced in US and these were part of a consignment sent to Pakistan in the 1980s.

The Austrian experts said the grenades used were manufactured in a Pakistan government ordnance factory using Austrian technology and machine tools, the R&AW officer said.