| by B.Raman
( November 17, 2012, Chennai, Sri Lanka
Guardian) After the March 1993 serial explosions in Mumbai organised by Dawood
Ibrahim, who was then living in Dubai, the Memon brothers and others trained by
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who had allegedly carried out the
conspiracy, escaped to Karachi via Kathmandu. They were given shelter in
Karachi by the ISI.
 |
| Rajeev Shukla during the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit at Taj Palace in New Delhi. HT/Ajay Aggarwal |
On coming to know of this, the Narasimha
Rao Government then in office in the Government of India brought this to the
notice of the US and sought its help for tracing them. The US Consulate in
Karachi started making enquiries about their presence there.
The ISI thereupon had them flown to
Bangkok where the perpetrators were kept in a hotel arranged by the Pakistani
Embassy in Bangkok. After some months, the US Consulate in Karachi stopped
making enquiries about their presence in Karachi. The ISI shifted them back to
Karachi.
One of the perpetrators went to
Kathmandu from Karachi and clandestinely entered India to meet a family friend.
He was arrested by the Police and interrogated. During the interrogation, it
came out that the perpetrators of the 1993 terrorist strikes organised by
Dawood Ibrahim had been kept in Bangkok for some time by the ISI. In August
1994, Shri Padmanabiah, the then Home Secretary of the Government of India,
held a press conference to announce the details of what the suspect had told
the Police about the perpetrators of the 1993 terrorist strikes organised by
Dawood Ibrahim being kept in a Bangkok hotel by the ISI after the commission of
the terrorist strikes.
Around the same time, the “Far Eastern
Economic Review”, then published from Hongkong, had carried a report alleging
that Mr.Thaksin Shinawatra, who had won a telecom contract in Cambodia by
bribing local Army officers, had tried to instigate a coup in Cambodia with the
help of Cambodian Army officers in the pay of his company.
It also came out in India that the
telecom company of Mr.Thaksin Shinawatra had been given a contract in Kolkata.
The issue figured in the Lok Sabha. Our intelligence community drew the
attention of Narasimha Rao to the allegations made against Mr.Thaksin
Shinawatra’s telecom company in Cambodia by the “Far Eastern Economic Review”.
Narasimha Rao had it checked up whether
background enquiries regarding Mr.Thaksin
Shinawatra had been made before his company was given the Kolkata contract. It
was found that no such enquiries had been made.
Some years later, Mr.Thaksin Shinawatra
entered politics and became the Prime Minister of Thailand from 2001 to 2006.
He was very well disposed towards India during his Prime Ministership and even
earlier when he was a Deputy Prime Minister. He helped India in becoming a full
dialogue partner of the ASEAN and was always positive in his attitude towards
India. We were happy with him as a political leader, Deputy Prime Minister and
Prime Minister.
It came to notice during his Prime
Ministership that he was maintaining equally close relationship with Gen.Pervez
Musharraf, who was then in power in Pakistan. He had allegedly come to know
Musharraf through Mr.Shaukat Aziz, a Pakistani businessman living in the Gulf,
who became the Finance Minister of Musharraf and subsequently his Prime
Minister in 2005. When Mr.Shaukat Aziz was the Prime Minister of Pakistan and
Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra was the Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin had worked hard to
bring Pakistan and the ASEAN closer together.
As Prime Minister, Mr.Shaukat Aziz
visited Bangkok from May 8 to 10,2005. Thaksin spent most of the time with him,
drove him around and accompanied him for his courtesy call on the King of
Thailand who was then staying in the interior. The close relations of Thaksin
with Mr.Shaukat Aziz and through him with Gen.Pervez Musharraf came to notice
during this period.
After leaving office, Musharraf against
whom there is allegedly a non-bailable warrant in Pakistan in connection with
the pending investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December
2007, has been living in London allegedly as a guest of Shaukat Aziz, the close
friend of Thaksin.
It is intriguing that despite this past history, Pervez Musharraf
and Thaksin should have figured as honoured guests in the leadership summit of
the “Hindustan Times” held at New Delhi on November 16 and 17 and should have
been lionised by the CNN-IBN TV channel which was associated with the summit.
I had myself in the past spoken well of
the helpful attitude of Thaksin to India, but at the same time I had been
concerned over his closeness to Aziz.
I don’t know what is the objective of
the so-called leadership summits and whether any purpose is served by issuing
invitations that could become controversial and embarrassing.
(The
writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of
India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,
Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail:
seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter
@SORBONNE75)
 After the March 1993 serial explosions in Mumbai organised by Dawood ...){kind=link}