From Indian passport to son’s school admission, Pakistani spy built a new life in Pune — until cops came knocking

The police found that Desai was originally a resident of Karachi and an agent for Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). They recovered from him classified documents marked “Restricted”, relating to “training of weapons” for Indian Army personnel, and a list of officers. They also found that he was operating on the instructions of Pakistani Military Intelligence officials identified as “Yusuf and Khurram”.

Following an FIR registered at the Sahkarnagar police station, Desai was convicted and sent to jail. But the story did not end there. Behind bars for over eight years, and awaiting deportation to Pakistan, he escaped from the police station where he was kept under observation and was nabbed after nearly three weeks in Kolkata. Desai was finally deported through the Wagah border in Punjab.

How ISI agent ‘became’ Indian citizen

Born in Karachi on February 8, 1960, Desai got married to Bibi Zohra of Kolhapur in Maharashtra in 1984. According to police records, it was in August 1996 that the couple crossed the Attari rail checkpost on a 45-day visa on the pretext of visiting Nandyal and Pune. Police said Desai had earlier visited India multiple times on a Pakistani passport for “selling clothes and dry fruits and doing business”, even though he was then working at a hospital canteen in Karachi.

On October 8, 1996, the couple reported to the Foreigners Branch of the Pune city police and obtained a temporary resident permit valid till October 11, 1996, when they were to leave the country. But they overstayed, shifting locations in Pune, and moving to a relative’s house in Kolhapur. Meanwhile, with the help of an associate Ziauddin Shaikh, Desai got a house on rent in Pune, a driving licence from the city RTO and a ration card – all by submitting forged documents.

Investigators also found that Desai had secured admission for his son at an English-medium school on the basis of a fake school-leaving certificate from an Agra school. He got a birth certificate for his daughter from the Nagar Parishad in Kolhapur. Besides, the police recovered an Indian passport with his photograph but in the name of “Sahibzada Bade Sahjib Shaikh”, which he had used to visit Pakistan twice — in June 1997 through the Attari rail post and in January 1998 through the Mumbai airport.

Following Desai’s arrest, the police nabbed his wife from Kolhapur for overstaying even as a search of her house led to the seizure of documents related to “manpower deployment” of an Indian Army unit. Zohra was deported to Pakistan, and the unmasking of Desai as an ISI agent was complete.

Mumbai arrests & some key links

According to court records, Desai’s arrest was preceded by the arrest of his “contact” by the Mumbai CID two days earlier: Abdul Samad Wali Mohammed Hingora, a resident of Dongri who ran a communication centre. The CID’s FIR against Hingora also named a man identified as Talha, who was absconding.

According to the CID, Hingora, Talha and their associates allegedly collected information and documents on Indian defence establishments from various sources and faxed them to Pakistan from the communication centre in Mumbai. The Desai link was unearthed when sleuths recovered documents pertaining to “suspicious” financial transactions from Talha’s house.

With the trail leading to three more men – Mohammed Shahnawaz Mohammed Faiz Amani, Imtiyaz Razak Dalal and Afzal Dawood Darvesh – the CBI took over the investigation into the Pune and Mumbai FIRs in August 1999. Investigations revealed that Desai used to stay at various hotels in Mumbai to meet Imtiyaz, Talha and Afzal, and hand over classified documents related to the Indian Army to be faxed to Pakistan. The accused were also allegedly sending and receiving “envelopes” from Talha’s contact “Salim” in Karachi who had relatives in Mumbai, the case records show.

The investigators told the court that Desai made multiple phone calls to Pakistan, including to the Intelligence official Khurram, through public phone booths. The trail also led to the arrest of David Manuel, who worked at the canteen of a defence establishment in Pune, for allegedly passing on photocopies of ammunition supply vouchers.

In the end, records show, a total of ten persons were arrested in this case. While four were discharged due to lack of evidence, the CBI chargesheeted six, including Desai, Ziauddin Shaikh, David Manuel, Hingora, Afzal Darvesh, Imtiyaz Dalal and Amani, under sections of the IPC, Official Secrets Act (OSA) and Foreigners Act.

In October 2007, Desai pleaded guilty before a court in Pune and was handed rigorous imprisonment of seven years. By then, he had already spent over eight years in jail. Of the others, five received the same sentence in May 2009 while Amani was acquitted.

Escape from Pune, arrest from Kolkata

After being released from Yerawada Central Prison, Desai was kept at the Sahakarnagar police station with his deportation pending when he escaped on January 23, 2008. This episode ended with his capture in Kolkata on February 16 and he was brought back to Pune by a team led by Crime Branch Inspector Bhanupratap Barge. The police found that during his escape, Desai had stayed in Satara, at the house of his former jailmate Shailesh Jadhav, an Army clerk who had been court-martialled for misappropriation of Rs 1.5 lakh.

A fresh FIR was lodged against Desai and Jadhav under the IPC and OSA at the Bundgarden station, with the police claiming that they had seized Army-related documents from Jadhav. The police claimed that Jadhav wanted to give the documents to Desai who planned to cross over to Bangladesh from West Bengal. In April 2011, however, a Pune court acquitted the two in this case citing lack of evidence but ordered Desai’s deportation. Desai was then taken to Kolkata, where he faced another case under the Foreigner’s Act. Finally, around 2011, Desai was deported to Pakistan.