As Farooq cries foul, Dulat says his book praises former J&K CM

NEW DELHI: As former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah cries ‘betrayal’ over former RAW director and ‘friend’ A S Dulat’s claim in his latest book that the senior Abdullah had privately supported the abrogation of Article 370 in J&K, the ex-spymaster has clarified that all that he meant to convey is that Farooq always wanted to be on the right side of Delhi, albeit on his own terms.
“If he is saying I have betrayed him, he possibly has not read the book. The book is not a critique but praises Farooq Abdullah for the leader he is. As former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief and my ex-boss M K Narayanan says in the foreword of ‘The Chief Minister and The Spy’, Abdullah is one of the tallest leaders in Kashmir and the country. And I stand by that,” Dulat told TOI on Thursday.
In the chapter ‘Abrogation and its Aftermath’, Dulat writes that Farooq was terribly hurt by the Modi govt’s August 5, 2019 decision to nullify Article 370 in J&K. “Just as the BJP had never hidden its intentions towards Kashmir as far as Article 370 was concerned, so, too, had Farooq been extremely open about his willingness to work with Delhi. Maybe, he said, the NC could even have had the proposal passed in the legislative assembly in Jammu and Kashmir. ‘We would have helped,’ he told me when I met him in 2020. ‘Why were we not taken into confidence?” wrote the former spy.
Farooq, as per Dulat, was however, shattered by his house arrest in wake of the abrogation.
Dulat’s latest account, published by Juggernaut, is replete with rhapsodies of praise for the NC veteran; the writer claims that Farooq and he, sent to Kashmir to head the IB office there, hit if off from the word go and would often set protocol aside to sit and discuss Kashmir affairs over drinks and dinner.
IB reports to the Union home ministry.
Another interesting revelation by Dulat relates to the abduction of then Union minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiya Sayeed in 1989. Dulat, who was then heading the IB office in Kashmir, said JKLF had initially planned to abduct Safia, eldest daughter of then chief minister Farooq Abdullah, but dropped the idea due to the high security around their Gupkar Road residence. The second choice was the daughter of the senior superintendent of police (SSP) Allah Baksh, “a straightforward man who only spoke the language of the ‘danda’ and followed strictly whatever orders he got”. While they were planning this kidnapping, Dulat wrote, V P Singh was sworn in as PM on Dec 2, 1989, and Mufti was made India’s first home minister. This is when JKLF got a brainwave: “Why not pick up Rubaiya?”. Mufti was then seen as Delhi’s man, with no real connection to the Valley.
Farooq initially opposed the Centre’s decision to release militants in exchange for Rubaiya, saying he wouldn’t do it even if it were his own daughter. Dulat reveals that Abdullah, who was abroad at the time of Rubaiya’s abduction, was egged on by him to speak to a distraught Mufti after he returned. He picked up the phone to talk to Mufti and asked him “not to worry”. Having said that, Farooq kept his word and consented to freeing the prisoners to secure Rubaiya’s release.
A decade later, Farooq also voiced reservations to the release of Mushtaq Zargar, a Kashmiri terrorist, as part of the IC-814 hostage swap deal; he was, though, okay with freeing Masood Azhar and Omar Sheikh. However, then J&K governor Gary Saxena convinced the chief minister, over a drink of Black Label, that it was the only option, given the circumstances.