Attack in Srinagar: "my head is bloody, but unbowed"

In the SMHS Hospital, Srinagar

This picture was taken by a local press photographer and appeared in The Motherland, New Delhi daily, along with a report from its Srinagar correspondent, Avtar Kishan Watt

On January 30, 1974, I jotted down these lines in a diary: "Writing after a gap of seven days spent in hospital. Looking back, it all appears like a dream, or a movie, not quite real." 

I was in the office (UNI bureau in Srinagar), working on a "Christ in Kashmir" story, based on a book by Aziz Kashmiri, for release on Sunday. It was a story I had heard of earlier.  Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, had narrated it at the UN while participating in a debate on Kashmir. 

According to this story, Jesus Christ did not die on the cross. He was brought down alive, and after the wounds healed he travelled east to spread the gospel among the lost tribes of Israel. Thus he reached the Kashmir valley. 

On the outskirts of Srinagar there is a tomb which, according to local tradition, is Christ's. 

I looked at the watch. The time was 8.35 p.m. I put the story aside and left for home. 

I was staying alone in a government accommodation in Jawahar Nagar, allotted to me as an accredited journalist. My wife and daughter were in New Delhi. (When UNI transferred me from New Delhi to Bombay in December 1972 I knew I was entering an uncertain phase and decided not to disturb the family immediately.) 

When I reached the house I found the gate unlatched. I presumed my part-time cook had forgotten to put the latch on. 

I stepped into the compound. The lock on the front door was missing. Was the cook still in the house, I wondered. No, he couldn’t be, for the lights were out. I stood there for a while asking myself whether I should go in or go out and seek help.  

Eventually I decided to go in. Pushing the front door open, I moved in cautiously and switched on the light. I then opened the cupboard in that room to see if there was any sign of a break-in by burglars. The camera I had kept in the cupboard after taking pictures when my wife and daughter came to spend the Christmas holidays was still there. So there had been no burglary.

Pictures taken when my wife and daughter came to spend Christmas holidays in Srinagar

As I stood there I heard the sound of footsteps from upstairs. Obviously, there was someone inside the house, possibly in the first floor bedroom that is heated at night using a bukhari. He couldn't be a burglar. If he were, he could have quietly slipped out through the back door as I stood outside the house. Apparently he was waiting for me. 

I again thought of going out and seeking help.  My house was a unit of a twin house. The adjoining unit was locked as its occupant, R K Thakkar, IAS, Legislature Secretary, was away at Jammu, the winter capital. One unit of the next twin house was occupied by Muzaffar Ahmed Khan, Assistant Director of Information. I could go there and get help. But, then, the intruder who was on the first floor could see me go and would know that I had gone to seek help. He could get away before I returned with help. If he was a potential attacker I may have to face him later at some other time and place of his choosing. I often walk home at night through deserted streets. I decided it was best to confront him there and then and meet whatever fate awaited me. 

I went to the store adjoining the kitchen where logs bought for winter heating were kept. I picked up a handy piece of wood and went into the rooms one after another and switched on the lights. There was no one on the ground floor.

Then I walked up the stairs. As I pushed open the door of the heated bedroom using the stick in my hand, a man wearing the traditional Kashmiri phiren jumped out and tried to hit me on the head with a heavy instrument. I dropped the piece of wood and tried to get hold of the weapon. I noticed that one more person was there. He remained in the unlit bedroom. I told myself I could handle the attacker if other man didn't join him. 

For a while, both the attacker and I had our hands on the heavy metallic instrument. He repeatedly brought it down on my head, causing bleeding. Then he let go the weapon and ran down the stairs. The other man immediately came out of the bedroom and ran out with him. I now knew why he had stayed back in the unlit room. He did not want me to identify him. 

With the weapon in my hand and bleeding profusely, I walked to Muzaffar Ahmed Khan's house. The entire household gathered in the drawing room to find out what had happened. Someone suggested that I be given a cup of hot milk. Muzaffar's mother quickly produced a bowl of boiled milk.

Muzaffar telephoned the police. He also called a taxi to take me to the hospital. Soon some policemen arrived, and one of them started asking questions about the incident. I told him I must first go to the hospital. Muzaffar's younger brother, Basharat Ahmed Khan, and his friend, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who happened to be there at the time, took me to the hospital in the taxi.

At the hospital, the doctor put 11 stitches on my head. He said the X-ray did not reveal any fracture. The wounds were not deep but the possibility of internal damage could not be ruled out. I must remain in the hospital for a week. 

The police took my statement at the hospital. They told me the metallic instrument used by the assailant was a heavy crowbar used to open truck tyres.

Lying in the hospital I put the pieces together and solved the whodunnit mystery to my satisfaction. I had landed in Kashmir as I earned the displeasure ofUNI General Manager G.G. Mirchandani. First, he transferred me from New Delhi to Bombay. Then he sacked me. A six day strike by UNI employees in New Delhi and Bombay forced him to rescind the order terminating my service. I moved to Kashmir in terms of the settlement he had worked out with the Union with the help of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists.

Although I had been in Kashmir for only six months, I had already earned the displeasure of two powerful politicians, Chief Minister Syed Mir Qasim and Agriculture Minister Trilochan Dutt.

The fallout with the Chief Minister occurred when I accompanied him on a tour of Ladakh. In the Buddhist region, he ran into demonstrations, and there was a protest hartal in Leh. Towards the end of the Ladakh visit, there was a reception which was attended by senior civil and military officials and Buddhist leaders. During the party an official informed me that the Chief Minister wanted to see me. I went up to him. He was furious that I had mentioned the local protests in my reports. "This is a border area. You have to keep the national interest in mind," he told me. I told him, "I decide for myself what is in the national interest. I don't intend to take dictation from anyone on what is in the national interest."   

Newspapers took several days to reach Leh. Mir Qasim’s reaction to my reports was based on what someone had conveyed to him on phone from Srinagar.

As the CM continued with his diatribe, I told him,"You have not seen my reports. You are reacting on the basis of what someone else told you. When we get back to Srinagar I shall show you the reports UNI put out and we can discuss the matter then". A senior minister who was beside the CM immediately said, "Yes, let us discuss this in Srinagar" and led him away. 

Before leaving the venue of the party a military officer conveyed to me an invitation from Major General S. P. Mahadevan, the army’s chief in Leh, to join him in his quarters. When I met him, Mahadevan told me he had read my reports and was impressed with my objectivity. I asked how he could see my reports when papers which might have carried them were not available in Leh. He said air force planes which flew supplies to Leh daily from Chandigarh brought in the Delhi newspapers also. 

I earned the displeasure of Trilochan Dutt when I reported the arrest of his son, Bharat, on a rape charge. Other correspondents did not report the event, some of them by choice and others because the telecommunication channels were down on that day. As Delhi papers played it up, all the correspondents were compelled to follow up the story.

A senior journalist told me a few days later that Trilochan Dutt wanted to see me. When I met him, Dutt said,"You are the instrumentality through which I am being destroyed. You are the only one who reported the arrest. If you had not reported, no one else would have touched it."

I explained that when police arrested the son of a powerful minister like him on rape charge I had to report it.

Facsimile of first take of UNI report on Bharat Dutt's arrest

"The report was all about Trilochan Dutt," he said. I pointed out that my report mentioned his name only once, and that was to establish Bharat's identity as his son. 

In my mind, the first piece of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place when I recognized the assailant's associate as he ran out of the house. He was R. P. Gupta, the UNI technician. A native of Jammu, he was working in Rajkot. Mirchandani transferred him to Srinagar when I moved there. I had assumed his task was only to report to him on me. 

The second piece fell into place when I remembered my meeting with the CM in the winter capital a few days earlier. 

I was in Jammu on January 12 to see off my wife and daughter to Delhi. Before starting from Srinagar the previous day I had sought an appointment with the CM to discuss the government's move to discontinue its subsidy for the scheme under which UNI supplied an abridged service to small Urdu newspapers.   

As I entered his room, the Chief Minister came forward, shook my hands and said he was sorry to hear of the burglary in my house. I told him there had been no burglary. If a burglary took place after I left for Jammu the previous day I was unaware of it. He said, "Maybe I got it wrong," and quickly moved to the subsidy scheme.

He knew of the burglary 12 days before it took place!

The third piece fell into place as I was trying to figure out why the attacker carried a crowbar, and not a gun or a knife. One explanation was that there was no intention to kill. Another possible explanation was that he was using a tool which he used in his workplace. 

Trilochan Dutt owned automobile garages in Jammu and Srinagar.

I was convinced that the plotters had instructed the assailant only to wound, and not to kill. They might have thought that was enough to get me out of Kashmir. A few years earlier there was a burglary at the house of The Statesman’s  correspondent in Srinagar. When he and his wife returned from an outing, all their belongings were gone. They left the city for good soon afterwards.

I decided to stay put. I reckoned that it would best for all concerned if I did not share my solution of the mystery with any one.

EPILOGUE

On discharge from the hospital, I took two months' leave for rest and recuperation in Delhi. Just before my return to Srinagar, Mirchandani transferred R.P. Gupta back to Rajkot.

Incidentally, Mirchandani was the only one, apart from Mir Qasim, who thought I was the victim of a burglary.  

Mirchandani's letter saying he had heard I was the victim of a burglary

Telegram from B.R. Vats, Secretary General, Indian Federation of Working Journalists, expressing deep shock over assault 

The Srinagar police concluded that I was injured in a burglary attempt. They pinned the case on a gang of robbers, which took the name Jugnu from a popular Hindi film. They did not cite me as a witness in the case.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, Basharat Ahmed Khan’s friend, was handpicked by Sanjay Gandhi for the post of President of J and K Youth Congress. He climbed steadily in the Congress hierarchy and is now Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.  

Trilochan Dutt resigned from the State Cabinet. He had earned Indira Gandhi's displeasure at the time of the Congress split by not giving an affidavit in favour of her Congress (I). She used Bharat Dutt's rape case as an excuse to force him out of the government. 

I spent five more years in Jammu and Kashmir, including the Emergency years, without suffering any further physical damage. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance                                                                                                           I have not winced nor cried aloud.                                                                                                         Under the bludgeonings of chance                                                                                                        My head is bloody, but unbowed.

   -- Lines from William Ernest Henley's Invictus