Jilted lover saved Pak nuclear programme: Ex-ISI officer

An "unsung jilted" lover saved Pakistan's nuclear programme from a major "sabotage" three-decade back after a whirlwind romance with a nuclear male scientist, a top former ISI official, who was jailed by Benazir Bhutto and military ruler Pervez Musharraf, has revealed.

The Karachi lecturer, who felt betrayed after a romance with a nuclear scientist of the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP), gave lead to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1978, which in turn led to the dramatic arrest of 12 Pakistani scientists and engineers, planning to sabotage the country's nuclear sites, claims Brig (retd) Imtiaz Ahmed, the then head of the spy agency in Sindh.

"The expose led to the arrest of Pakistani scientists who were later given death and life imprisonment sentences by the special tribunal set up by the then president General Ziaul Haq," The News daily reported on Thursday.

"While many people take credit for saving our nuclear programme, no one actually knows how an unsung jilted girl had actually ended up saving Pakistan’s nuclear project out of sheer vengeance," Ahmed, who broke his silence of over 30 years, was quoted as saying by the Pakistani daily.

Recalling the event, the former ISI officer of 'Operation Midnight Jackals' fame, said he had first met the lecturer of a Karachi Memon family while she was undergoing treating for "secret concealment", a disease wherein a patient could not be cured unless he or she shared a secret kept with her.

Later when the credential of Rafique Munshi, an engineer with KANUPP came under suspicion, Brigadier Ahmed, who served as director in-charge of Internal Security ISI for several years, again traced the Karachi lecturer after he came to know that the woman was linked to the nuclear scientist.

Though the woman felt "betrayed and cheated" by Munshi she was still dating the nuclear engineer. She led the ISI officer to Munshi's secret safe and official files related to Pakistan’s nuclear sites and installations along with "piles of dollars".

"Obviously engineer Munshi was working for the secret agency of a superpower which used to provide him questions and he used to give them the replies to those questions related to the nuclear programme," said Ahmed, who was later decorated with a Tamgha-e-Basalat by the president of Pakistan.

After ten months of hard work and armed with necessary information, the matter was brought to the notice of director general ISI Riaz Mohammad by Ahmed.

"Listen, almost 30 years have passed since this incident, but till date I can’t forget how a heartbroken woman’s commitment to take revenge from her lover had led to the unfolding of this secret, which, if not shared, might have deprived Pakistan of its nuclear assets and we might not be celebrating this day," the retired brigadier was quoted as saying by the Pakistani daily.

According to the plot, 12 nuclear scientists and engineers were to develop "huge technical sabotage of the programme" to an extent that it could not have been repaired or fixed for some years to come, the report said. They were arrested from various places in the light of information given by Ahmed.

The ringleader Munshi was sentenced to death while others were awarded life sentences by the court. Later, however, Brig Ahmed learned that president Zia had commuted the death penalty of Munshi "on the recommendation of a top Sindhi leader in exchange for his political support to the Zia regime".

Bhutto had put Ahmed in jail for about three years on charges of being part of the operation to oust her in 1989 during her first government. Later, General Musharraf also put him in jail for four years till his acquittal by the Lahore High Court. He is the only spymaster of Pakistan who was jailed for eight years, after serving 15 years in the ISI and the IB, said the report in the Pakistani daily.