"Return of the Memons- A Pyrrhic Victory" continues...

After sleeping fitfully that night, when I got up in the morning it suddenly occurred to me that I had once seen an Indian Airlines advertisement in a newspaper announcing a direct flight to Delhi from Sharjah. I woke up my wife and sounded her on an idea that had struck me. Why couldn’t the Memons leave from Sharjah instead of Dubai? She asked me to first be sure of the flight out of Sharjah. On enquiry with Indian Airlines (it had not merged with Air India then), I was informed that indeed what I thought was correct. And, more interestingly, the Air India flight from Dubai and the Indian Airlines flight from Sharjah took off within a few hours of each other. Aware of the topography of the two emirates Dubai and Sharjah, which are minutes away from each other, I planned to make two sets of bookings for the Memon family: one from Dubai and the other from Sharjah. While the bookings from Dubai would be in their names as given on their Pakistani passports, we had to somehow ensure that the bookings from Sharjah remain a secret, lest the ISI play dirty again.

It was not even seven that morning when I called up the Director and shared the new idea that had crossed my mind. He quite liked it and asked me to go ahead. Perhaps, from the previous night’s experience he had realised the futility of involving too many of his advisors in the operation, he asked me to report to him directly and not share any information with intermediary officers. That suited me fine.
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Here a word about the CBI. It is primarily an anti-corruption body. Its core strength is collection of intelligence concerning corruption in high places in the Central Government and its subsidiaries, laying traps and catching culprits red handed, investigating cases of assets disproportionate to known sources of income etc.

To be continued...