The secret school for spy-catchers
THERE was a time when the training establishment of MI5, the security service of the UK, was located at a place named Mount Pleasant. It must have been somebody with an overweening sense of loyalty to the Crown, or a weird sense of humour, who decided that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) of India should also locate its training centre at some place with a similar, if not identical, name. Unfortunately, there was no Mount Pleasant to be found in Delhi or its vicinity. After searching high and low for some place with a name resembling Mount Pleasant, the powers that be zeroed in on an area called Anand Parbat in the western part of Delhi. And it was on this Mount Pleasant aka Anand Parbat that the IB established its training centre sometime in the early part of the 20th century.
One would really need to stretch one’s imagination to consider a molehill called Anand Parbat to be a mountain, for it was nothing but a pimple on the landscape of Delhi — infested with shanties and miserable huts. The Karol Bagh road ended at a paan shop at the foot of this hill, and taxi and autorickshaw drivers refused to go up the lane that curved its way to the top. If one trudged uphill for a quarter mile or so, one was rewarded with the sight of Ramjas School that had boasted of a proud campus in the distant past. Unfortunately, all that remained were dilapidated buildings, with broken glass panes. As there was no land or other accommodation available, the IB hired a portion of that rundown school to impart training to its new recruits and police officials of various states.
The training centre was an IB establishment and, therefore, it was deemed necessary to keep its location secret. No signboards were put up to show the way, and officials assigned for training were instructed not to reveal to anyone that they were headed to the IB centre. Instead, if needed, they were to ask for directions to Ramjas School.
Most of the officials who came for training to the IB were unfamiliar with Delhi; after getting off a taxi or an autorickshaw at the end of the Karol Bagh road, they needed to ask for directions. The most accessible person was the paanwala, who soon got curious about so many grownups enquiring where a particular school was located. He cottoned on after some time and he then started referring to the training centre as the Central CID School. And for many years thereafter, that paanwala directed people to the IB training centre whenever they asked for the way to Ramjas School. Gradually, a few thousand residents of Anand Parbat, and many thousand more residents of Karol Bagh, came to know that a Central CID training establishment was located atop Anand Parbat. But no one knew the location of the IB training centre. That remained a secret!
