Nawaz
Sharief Intervened To Get Soz’s Kidnapped Daughter Freed, by Iftikhar Gilani
DELHI: While India’s external
intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)’s intercepting a
telephonic conversation between former Pakistan Army chief Pervez Musharraf
from Beijing and his chief of staff Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz during the Kargil
crises is well-known, not much is known of a 1991 RAW intercept that led to the
release of former union minister Professor Saifuddin Soz’s daughter Naheed
(28), who was abducted by terrorists in Srinagar.
RAW sleuths had recorded conversation of the
then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during his Beijing visit, speaking to
his information minister Maulana Kausar Niazi, asking him to convey to people
concerned that the act of kidnapping was “un-Islamic act and Naheed should be
released”.
In a forthcoming book, Kashmir: Glimpses of History
and the Story of Struggle accessed exclusively by DNA, former
minister and author Prof. Soz mentions that the then Prime Minister Chandrashekhar
had confided to him that RAW had intercepted Sharif’s call.
“The PM had told then chief of RAW that he was
happy to know that India’s communication system was in good shape and
complimented the RAW for having done its duty,” records the book. PM Chandrashekhar
had asked the minister of state for home Subodh Kant Sahai not to make any
statement related to the kidnapping in the Parliament, till he spoke to
Pakistan high commission in India, Abdul Sattar. The PM summoned Sattar to his
own office and told him to convey to Sharif, who was in China to ensure
Naheed’s release. Next morning, RAW chief came rushing to the PM with
transcripts of Sharif’s telephonic conversation with his minister Niazi, who
was made points man to seek Naheed’s release.
While making public the famous telephone
conversation between General Musharraf and his chief of staff did earn India’s
sympathy and exposed Pakistan’s complicity in the Kargil war, many RAW sleuths
believe that it led to drying up of such intelligence later. Major General V K
Singh, who headed technical division of the RAW said that after the
communication was made public, Pakistan closed satellite link between Beijing
and Islamabad. “It is impossible to estimate the value of intelligence that
would have been obtained, if the link had continued to be used,” he said.
In 994 too, the RAW had picked by conversation
between former Pakistan President Farooq Leghari and Interior Minister
Naseerullah Babar, who with the help of then DGMO Pervez Musharraf were raising
Taliban. One of the key officials involved in the project Col. Imam was later
brutally killed in February 2011 by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Naheed was abducted by the Jammu & Kashmir
Students’ Liberation Front (JKSLF) to seize the leadership of the secessionist
movement. Former bureaucrats recall that meeting the kidnappers’ demands by
releasing their accomplices would have meant a disturbing replay of the events
of celebration by terrorists as was done a year earlier following the release
of Rubaiya, daughter of then home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. What
surprised analysts was that groups like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and the JKLF had
condemned Naheed’s abduction and asked for her release. To give a face saver to
the terror group, the administration released Mushtaq Ahmed, who the police
said was not wanted for any heinous crime. Even JKLF chief Amanullah Khan, who
in April 1990 had announced the killing of Kashmir University Vice-Chancellor.
Mushir-ul-Haq, this time made an appeal for Naheed’s release.
(Author is Strategic Affairs Editor with DNA. This report appeared first in DNA)
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