The following excerpts of an article raises some pertinent questions on the Official Secrets Act!
Compromising India
Claude Arpi
August 3, 2007.
This month India will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its independence. A large number of new books, their authors pretending to rewrite the event, are being published – some have already hit bookstores. Though they have not created the hysteria unleashed over Harry Potter’s last adventure, they have generated a lot of ink in the media.
One of these books brings out the glamorous side of the most tragic event of the 20th century: The division of the sub-continent. In her memoirs entitled India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power, Pamela Mountbatten, the daughter of India’s last Viceroy, writes about her mother Edwina’s “deep emotional love” for India’s first Prime Minister. It could be dismissed as another schmaltzy tale written to reap some money, but the book contains serious assertions. She admits that Lord Mountbatten did use Edwina to influence Jawaharlal Nehru on Jammu & Kashmir.
The day I was reading this story (which seems to shock nobody in India), I came across an article in Outlook in which Maj Gen VK Singh, author of India’s External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing had argued against the Kargil tapes being made public. The officer wanted to prove the relation between the tapes and the Official Secrets Act by taking the case of Brig Ujjal Dasgupta, Director, Computers, RAW who was arrested in July 2006. This officer was accused of having passed sensitive information to Rosanna Minchew, a CIA agent in the US Embassy. VK Singh argued, “Charges against Dasgupta have been framed under Official Secrets Act. As per the Act, if an Indian has any sort of communication with a foreign national, he’s presumed to have passed on information useful to an enemy.”
Though Maj Gen Singh’s comparing the release of Kargil tapes and Brig Dasgupta’s case is flimsy, one could ask: Can the special relations between Nehru and Edwina be seen from this angle? Nobody can deny today that the reference of Jammu & Kashmir to the UN has resulted in three wars for India and a lot of hardship for the people of that State.
......
By then Mountbatten was riding high. He spent Christmas day writing a long missive to Nehru, highlighting the danger of a military escalation and plied Attlee with confidential information. It is during those days probably that Edwina managed to make it “appealing to his heart more than his mind”. The events that followed are too well known. India’s case was buried in the bureaucratic corridors of the UN; the raiders were allowed to remain on Indian soil.
What about the Official Secrets Act?
For original full Story go to:
http://www.claudearpi.net/maintenance/uploaded_pics/070803CompromisingIndia.pdf
For comments on story go to:
http://www.sandeepweb.com/2007/08/03/nehrus-love-for-edwina-is-indias-continuing-nightmare/
Email
Print
ShareThe court of justice S Muralidhar dismissed the plea of Brigadier (retd) Ujjal Dasgupta, who had been arrested for leaking sensitive information to an agent of the CIA, America’s spy agency.
Dasgupta had filed a petition against the Centre for not disclosing information about software ‘Anveshak’, that was crucial to his defence in the espionage case against him.
Dasgupta was arrested in 2006 for violating the official secrets Act by passing on sensitive information to an American diplomat Rosanna Minchew.
The court dismissed his contention that not giving him the information amounted to violation of rights.
“The matter being before the trial court, the RTI Act cannot be used to circumvent the processes of law already in operation,” the court said.
Under the RTI Act, Dasgupta had wanted to know how ‘Anveshak’ was transferred to RAW, which agency installed it there and other details. But his plea was turned down by the government.