Gifts from the Gulf


William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), a British Liberal politician, was four times Prime
Minister, more than any other person in Great Britain’s history. ‘‘His supporters affectionately gave him the monikers ‘People’s William’’’ or the ‘‘‘Grand Old Man’’’.

Known for his robust health and indefatigable energy, he was once asked the secret of his long and healthy life. ‘‘‘I chew every morsel of food twenty times so my stomach doesn’t do what my teeth need to’’’, he disclosed.

Alas! Deputy Superintendent of Police M.C. Sahni of the CBI and six members of his team found it hard to stomach, literally, Gladstone’s advice on healthy living, while camping at Santalpur in Patan District of Gujarat in October of 2001.

The sleepy, one-horse town of Santalpur is less than, as the crow flies, forty five kilometers from the Indo-Pak border. The team was on a mission to trail the movement of a huge cache of arms, ammunition and explosives smuggled into India from across the border.

The food served to them in sundry wayside eateries always had irksome sprinklings of sand, thanks to the dust-laden winds blowing over the arid landscape. The trick, therefore, was to somehow swallow what they ate rather than masticate!

But even as our hard-nosed investigators found it difficult to chew on every morsel of their sandy servings, they decided to sink their collective teeth deep into a top secret operation in late October of 2001.

The mission the DSP and his team were pursuing was a joint operation of the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Economic Offences Unit-V (EOU-5) of the CBI. The BSF and the CBI, both federal organizations of the Government of India, had worked together on several such joint operations in the year 2000 and 2001, thanks to the trust and mutual coordination developed painstakingly between the then Director General, BSF Ram Mohan, his Inspector General (Ops) VN Rai and yours truly of the CBI. All such missions involved ‘controlled deliveries’ across the Indo-Pak border.


To be continued.....