New Delhi: Former Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief AS Dulat yesterday made an explosive revelation that Indian intelligence agencies regularly pay terrorists, separatists and mainstream Jammu and Kashmir political parties including the National Conference (NC) and PDP.
Dulat said that it is done all over the world by all intelligence agencies and there is nothing shocking in it.
“Nobody is immune to bribes, not the militants, not politicians and not the separatists. Over the years, they have all been paid by intelligence agencies. We paid money to demonstrate that what the ISI can do, we can do better, except kill people,” Dulat told Hindustan Times in an interview.
“I had bribed my way through Kashmir, but the fact is that when I was posted to Srinagar in 1988, the first thing I got to know was who was paying whom and how much. It is not a big deal. Intelligence agencies all over the world pay slush money,” he added.
He said as the militancy grew in the 1990s in the valley, payments increased gradually. “They grew from the hundreds to lakhs of rupees,” Dulat said.
He went on to add that there were some exceptions in the Hurriyat who did not accept the money but refused to name them.
Dulat clarified that he could only confirm payments till 2004.
Dulat was posted in J&K as an Intelligence Bureau officer in 1988. He went on to head the RAW, and then became adviser to prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee till 2004, when the NDA government was unseated by the Congress led UPA.
He hit out at UPA saying that they made him “the villain of the NDA's Kashmir policy”.
Both the NC and PDP have denied the charges of funding my intelligence agencies.
Dulat, who is soon to launch his book, “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years” has made shocking revelations before the release. Many more revelations are excepted to be made in the book.
On PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, he said former Prime Minister Vajpayee had grave reservations about her and thought she had links with Hizbul Mujahideen. "Now this is for Mehbooba to either admit or deny and I am sure she is not going to admit it easily because these are slightly embarrassing things," he told a private TV channel.
Commenting on the hijack of Indian Airlines plane IC-814 that was taken to Kandahar via Amritsar, Dulat said that the Crisis Management Group (CMG) "goofed up" the entire case by not immobilising the plane when it had landed in Amritsar and that the then Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah felt the decision by Union Government to release terrorists was a "mistake".
