By Smita Mishra Brahma/Ledo and Moreh, India NOVEMBER, 2006 – VOLUME 14 NO.11
Irriwaddy
A retired Indian military intelligence official accused of double-crossing and killing a group of separatist rebels from Burma’s Arakan State eight years ago has resurfaced in Punjab.
Retired Col B J S Grewal recently appeared in an interview on the Indian TV channel CNN–IBN, introduced as an expert on the insurgencies in the northeast, an area where he briefly served during his military intelligence career. Grewal is reportedly living in Mohali, Punjab, in an apartment with his family.
After six leaders of the separatist National Unity Party of Arakan were killed on the Andaman Islands in India’s eastern archipelago in February 1998, Grewal refused to testify before an Indian court or to appear at a federal police inquiry.
In a letter to Indian President A P J Abdul Kalam last month, NUPA said Grewal had asked the rebels to come to Landfall Island in the Andamans for discussions.
NUPA, however, alleged in the letter that when nearly 82 separatist fighters arrived in two ships, Grewal separated the leaders from the group and had six of them shot.
Among those killed was Khaing Raza, the NUPA supreme military commander. The remaining rebels were arrested, accused of gunrunning and imprisoned in the Andamans.
It took India’s Central Bureau of Investigation six years to formally present a charge against the NUPA rebels in an Andaman court. The CBI blamed the delay on alleged non-cooperation by the Indian Army, because officials involved in the incident, including Grewal, failed to appear at official inquiries.
One of India’s leading human rights lawyers, Nandita Haksar, asked the Supreme Court to transfer the case to a Calcutta court. The request was granted last month, and authorities were ordered to transfer the rebels to Calcutta and to insure a speedy trial.
“He [Grewal] has to appear before the court, as the whole history of the killings of 1998 can only be unraveled by cross-questioning him,” Haksar said.
NUPA also appealed to the Indian president to exercise his power of pardon to free the jailed rebels and allow them to travel to a safe country.
Grewal resigned from Indian military intelligence after reports in the Indian media publicized the killings immediately after the incident.
In an interview with Britain’s BBC, NUPA chairman Khin Maung disputed reports that Grewal is living in India and said he was in Burma, where he had been granted business interests, allegedly as a reward by the Burmese military junta.
A NUPA insurgent now in jail in the Andamans, Thein Oung Gyaw, said Indian military intelligence has used insurgents to spy on Chinese naval activity near the Burmese coast for several years.
“Grewal was leading this operation, and we all gave him help, but he double-crossed us to please the Burmese military junta,” Thein Oung Gyaw told the BBC.
Grewal refused to speak to the BBC when asked about the killings. Calls to his Indian mobile telephone number were not answered.
Source: https://www2.irrawaddy.com/article.php?art_id=6405
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