The curtain has finally come down on one of the murkiest episodes of Indian intelligence, after 34 Burmese rebels, long held in Calcutta's Presidency Jail, reached a 'plea bargain' settlement with their prosecution in early July. The agreement, which was approved by the city sessions court in Calcutta, will now lead to the dropping of all the charges against the rebels except those relating to the violation of the Foreigners Act. But when Judge Uday Chandra Nag sentenced the 34 rebels to three and a half years of imprisonment and a fine of INR 6000 each for violating the Foreigners Act, it was obvious the rebels would have to be released immediately – they had, after all, already been in Indian jails for 12 years.
'So after we pay the fine, we can get out,' said Thein Oung Gyaw, one of the rebels. But now we don't have any money, so we look toward the Burmese community in India to pay for our release. After all, they have borne the huge legal expenses.' In fact, the actual release of the 34 rebels might be delayed even after they pay their fines, because the authorities in Calcutta are yet to finalise the modalities for their discharge. 'We are seeking legal advice to finalise that,' said B D Sharma, the inspector-general in charge of prisons in Calcutta.
Ten of the rebels are from the Karen National Union (KNU) and the remaining 24 are from the National Unity Party of Arakan (NUPA), both fighting for separate homelands in Burma for the Karen and the Arakanese people respectively. Back in February 1998, they allege that they were lured to the Andaman Islands by an Indian military-intelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Biswajit Singh Grewal, who is said to have offered them a safe haven for pursuing their fight against the military junta in Burma. But when the rebels arrived in two ships, six of their leaders were purportedly shot dead by the Indian Army; the rest have since been detained on charges of gun-running.
NUPA Chairman Khin Maung told this writer that his group had received support from India's external-intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), and later from military intelligence. 'We came into contact with the RAW in the early 1990s,' he said. 'Later, we were asked to deal with the military intelligence. We were used to spy on Chinese naval activity on the Arakan coast that worries India, and also look out for Northeast Indian rebels who have bases in Burma.'