The big bad guns of Purulia

A cross-section of the people here, including police officers, Central Bureau of Investigation sleuths, lawyers, politicians and bureaucrats, feel that the case has lost its relevance with Bleach’s release.

Several theories have done the rounds. The one upheld by a City Civil Court in Kolkata in February 2000 convicted the five Latvians and Bleach to rigorous life imprisonment for conspiring to wage war against the State and unauthorised possession of arms and ammunition.

But nobody has been able to identify who the arms were meant for. Initially, all fingers — including those of the CBI — pointed to the Ananda Margis, primarily because the cadre-based organisation has its global headquarters in Purulia.

The CBI also claimed to have evidence that Kim Palgrave Davy, a Dane involved in the airdrop, was linked to the Margis. Davy had slipped out of Mumbai’s Sahar International airport on December 23, five days after the aircraft, having already dropped the cache of weapons in Purulia, was forced to land by Indian authorities.

However, the charges against the Margis did not stand the scrutiny of the city civil court judge, P.K. Biswas, who, in his judgement, categorically stated that there was not enough evidence to establish the involvement of the Margis. But it was a ‘‘rarest of of the rare cases, one that that put the safety of the country at stake,’’ he said, justifying the punishment to the accused.

The Margis were not the only ones to be linked to the airdrop. Some said it was a botched operation by the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) to dislodge the Left Front government in West Bengal. Others said the arms and ammunition were actually meant for militant groups in the North East, or those based in Bangladesh, and got dropped over Purulia in a grand error of navigation.

There was even a theory that the arms were meant for ultimate delivery to militants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) battling for autonomy in Sri Lanka.

All these theories remain unsubstantiated.

But there are other unanswered questions.

• How did Davy manage to slip out of the airport at Mumbai after the Indian Air Force forced the aircraft down?

• Then, why did the aircraft return to Indian airspace five days after botching up the airdrop operation?

• Why did the Union Home Ministry delay a critical alert for the West Bengal government? (The Home Minister sent an alert from British Intelligence by ordinary post.)

• Why was the cargo of the foreign aircraft not checked at Benaras, where it had landed for refueling and stayed for a long time?

Bleach’s release — and the apparent end of the Purulia case — comes at a time when the international war against terrorism is gaining momentum as nation states like India join hands to fight diffuse forces. Senior officials say the release highlights a dichotomy in India’s stated stand, with the trade-off between the Indian and the British side remaining a closely guarded secret.