![]() ![]() Raman, former head of raw's counter-terrorism division, in his 2007 book The Kaoboys of R&AW, two MI-5 intelligence liaison officials at the British high commission had scouted the Golden Temple complex in December 1983. It was to vet Operation Sundown, a commando raid. The sas assistance was not for Bluestar, a pure army assault, they told india today. Retired RAW officials and former members of its secret military wing, however, tell a different story. Brar calls reports of sas involvement in Bluestar "utter nonsense". New Delhi has so far not responded to the revelations. Watson's constituency, West Bromwich East, has many Sikh constituents. "This obviously raises huge questions over the role of the British government at the time," Labour MP Tom Watson told bbc on January 13. The new revelations about a possible British role in the build-up to Bluestar have already inflamed passions. Two of his attackers were handed down a 14-year sentence in December last year. ![]() Brar, who led Bluestar, and a frequent visitor to London, survived. On September 30, 2012, four Sikh youths attempted to murder retired Lt-Gen Kuldip Singh Brar on London's Oxford Street. Operation Bluestar still touches a raw nerve in India and abroad. The letter, written four months before Bluestar, sparked fears of a backlash from the UK's Sikh community, prompting Prime Minister David Cameron to order an inquiry into the findings. This plan, according to a top-secret letter from the principal private secretary of then British foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe to the then home secretary Leon Brittan, was drawn up by an officer of the Special Air Services (SAS), UK's elite commando force. On January 13, the United Kingdom was shocked by declassified letters dating to February 1984 that revealed that Margaret Thatcher's government had helped India on "a plan to remove Sikh extremists from the Golden Temple". Three decades later, Operation Sundown resurfaced in an unexpected location-London. There was a possibility of a firefight with the militant leader's bodyguards and civilians who could rush in to protect him. Once they captured him, he would be spirited away by a ground assault team which would drive in. Commandos would rope down from two Mi-4 transport helicopters onto the guest house and make a beeline for Bhindranwale. Then, for several weeks, over 200 SG commandos had rehearsed the operation on a wood and Hessian cloth mock-up of the two-storeyed resthouse at their base in Sarsawa in Uttar Pradesh. SG operatives had earlier infiltrated the Golden Temple, disguised as pilgrims and journalists, to study its layout. The operation was so named because it was timed for past midnight when Bhindranwale and his guards would least expect it. Operation Sundown, he explained, was a 'snatch and grab' job: Heliborne commandos would enter the Guru Nanak Niwas guesthouse near the Golden Temple and abduct the militant leader. The radical militant leader had then been ensconced near the Golden Temple since 1981 with his heavily armed followers, shielded by his proximity to Sikhism's holiest shrine.ĭGS briefed Mrs Gandhi on a surgical mission that fell short of a military strike to evict the rebels. His motley group of armed supporters had, by 1984, murdered over 100 civilians and security personnel. A radical group of Sikhs led by a fiery religious preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, 37, had declared war against the state. For over two years now, India's most prosperous state had been engulfed by communal violence. More important, he was a key adviser on the Punjab problem. He had returned to government as Mrs Gandhi's senior aide in 1981 and was now her de facto national security adviser. CRPF personnel take position for the siege of the Golden templeĭGS was ushered into the living room where a pensive Mrs Gandhi sat with a salt-and-pepper-haired gentleman wearing thick black glasses-Rameshwar Nath Kao, 66, the reclusive spymaster who had built the external intelligence agency, RAW, in 1968 and used it to train Mukti Bahini guerrillas during the Bangladesh war in 1971. ![]()
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