New Delhi, June 24
Former spy-masters of the country today came down heavily on the gag order issued by the government of India, seeking a national debate on the subject and calling it a violation of their fundamental rights as granted under the Constitution.
The government has issued a notification banning officers from writing books post-retirement on sensitive matters or secrets known to them during the course of their job. The Tribune had broken the story in its edition yesterday as to how the government has muzzled former spies by amending the central services and pension rules to stop any more secrets being spilled.
The threat is to stop a part or full pension of such authors who reveal secrets besides prosecuting the authors of such books, articles or television commentators. The government will get officers to sign a bond that they will not write books or articles or express their view through the electronic media on the country’s secrets.
Under the new rules, officers who have worked with the Research Analysis Wing, the IB, the air research centre, the national technical research centre, the directorate of revenue intelligence, the NSG, the SPG, The Special Frontier Force and the Assam Rifles, the BSF, among others will, be barred from sharing secrets.
Former joint director of the IB M.K. Dhar - the author of a few such books that exposed the governments of the past -- today told the Tribune: “Let the government approach me to sign the bond and I will move court to seek justice. Let there be a national debate if there should be a ban or not. The country has the right to know the truth.” Dhar, a former IPS officer, has worked extensively in Punjab and
the north-east.
Although the order, which was circulated in the ministries last week, does not mention about officers who had retired prior to the notification, a grey area exists as former officials feel they could be prosecuted. Some of them still lead lives of seclusion and others live under the threat due to the sheer nature of the work they
handled in the past.
A senior retired officer of the IB, who was involved in Punjab during the peak of terrorism, said even today the government uses the services of the former officers when the need arises in back channel efforts within the country or outside. He called it a violation of article 19 of the Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech
and expression.
With no system of automatically de-classifying documents after a fixed number of years, these books by former spies were seen as an authentic account of recent history. Most of the intelligence gathering agencies even out of the ambit of auditing. Till the notification came into force, retired officers were provided a two-year cooling-off period before they published literature related to their work in sensitive posts.
Books in the past have exposed the political system and have been lapped-up by the thinking classes as everybody wanted to know the truth behind the Punjab problem, the Kashmir issue or the north-east.
