RAW, ISI had collaborated in the past, claims ex-spy chief
There was never any plan to kill underworld don Dawood Ibrahim
By : samrat
Update: 2015-07-04 03:22 GMT
Mumbai: Former RAW chief A.S. Dulat, who has kicked off a major political row between the BJP and the Congress with his revelations about the Kandahar hijack and former prime minister AB Vajpayee’s reaction to the Gujarat riots, has let on in his yet unreleased book that there was never any plan to kill underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
The talk of killing Dawood “has taken place outside the government and has not been sanctioned by any government of the day,” he writes in “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years” co-authored with journalist Aditya Sinha.
However, he says that the ISI killed Kashmiri leaders Abdul Majid Dar and Abdul Ghani Lone, which led to discussions on the need for a tit for tat policy, but it remained only an informal discussion.
There was also another kind of informal discussion – between the R&AW and the ISI. Mr Dulat refers to cooperation between RAW and ISI. “The ISI also acknowledges that timely Intelligence provided by R&AW about a likely Jaish-e-Mohammad attack may have saved Musharraf’s life in 2004,” he writes.
Pointing out that former R&AW chief P.K. Hormis Tarakan met then ISI chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Mr Dulat says allowing the spy chiefs of India and Pakistan to meet is an idea that makes sense. “There’s no question of a hidden agenda,” he says.
“In any case, we know each other’s agenda-it is simply each other.” Going further, he suggests that one of R&AW’s Islamabad posts should be made an open post on a reciprocal basis. The open post is one where the spy does not try to hide undercover, and is posted openly to allow for collaboration and cooperation.