There they were again. After all, they had tasted blood during the 26/11 Mumbai terror strike. Stealthily crawling into Indian waters in a fishing trawler laden with the ambition to strike again were four gun-wielding terrorists trying to do a Kasab re-run. In the wee hours of December 31, 2014, the vast stretch of the Arabian Sea had become restless. Taking advantage of the rough weather and strong winds, an explosives laden Pakistani trawler crept into Indian waters. The success of Ajmal Kasab and his accomplices breaching India’s coastline and gunning down 166 people was too tempting and the Pakistani handlers had decided to launch the terrorists from the coasts of Keti Bunder near Karachi towards the Gujarat coast on a suicide mission.
“As Pakistan has tasted success of a seaborne Mumbai terror attack, they can strike again,” says Arun Choudhry, former special director in the Intelligence Bureau. Perhaps, it is this realisation that has prompted the Modi government to make the central intelligence agencies shift gears in securing the country’s 7,500km-long coastline covering nine states. From a conservative maritime intelligence policy, for the first time the Intelligence Bureau is giving a renewed impetus to coastal security.
Handling landport and seaport intelligence units was just one of the many tasks of the sleuths looking after coastal security. Now for the first time, IB has created a desk under a joint director level officer to exclusively handle maritime intelligence along the entire coastline, as well as hone the spying capacity of the agency at sea. The IB plans to have more eyes on the sea by training its spies in collecting counterterrorism intelligence, gathering inputs that could indicate trends in activities of terror groups using sea routes and ensuring that nothing misses their eye as far as activities on the coastline is concerned. All this information would flow to the headquarters in New Delhi and shared seamlessly with other agencies.
The subtle shift has come at a time when China is struggling for primacy in the South China Sea and the country’s intelligence brass is foreseeing many such jostling at sea in a geography which is primarily maritime.
“While all the agencies have their own domain, and coastal security, industrial and port security are part of different agencies, it is difficult for any one agency to function alone. From Gujarat to Kochi, the regulation of boats, their licences and checking are the responsibility of the state governments. In a good season of fishing, it is difficult to monitor all the boats, and various agencies are at work gathering intelligence about possible threats and suspicious activities at sea, including those from external sources,” says former IB chief A.S. Dulat, who has also served as chief of R&AW, the country’s external spy agency. Today, the R&AW is keeping a close watch on small islands in the Arabian Sea where militant groups are trying to forge links with locals. The R&AW bases in Mauritius and Male regularly share inputs with the domestic agencies back home.
“So while the Indian Navy is the lead intelligence agency for high seas followed by the Indian Coast Guard which secures the territorial waters from the coast up to the point from where the Navy takes over, the IB still have enough room to test its spying skills,” says Dulat.
Multiple eyes at sea seems to be the new mantra of the Modi government in the face of growing intelligence alerts about Pakistani terror groups planning Mumbai-style attacks in the hinterland and eyeing suicide missions on Naval assets and warships. Then there are the missiles and their island bases that need to be secured, says Choudhry.
But the IB’s plans have temporarily run into rough weather. The IB had brought Harmeet Singh, a 1992 batch IPS officer with 15 years of spying experience behind him, to take over as the new joint director (coastal security) in Delhi. Singh, who belongs to the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, was heading the State Intelligence Bureau in Jammu and Kashmir during the violent protest days in the valley. After being in Delhi for a few days, he was suddenly repatriated to his parent cadre in Assam. The officers within the agency are surprised because many do not remember the last time an officer was repatriated to his cadre.
The IB, however, is keen to take its plan forward and may give the charge to another officer. “After 26/11 we realised that a multi-agency centre needs to be reactivated and the intelligence inputs should be shared vertically and across the board horizontally. Similarly we are realising today that all agencies need to share information and continue to build their assets,” says former IB chief Rajiv Mathur.
The New Year chase of the fishing trawler serves as an example of a multi-intelligence operation. A third agency, the National Technical Research Organisation, helped pick up the conversation of the terrorists which supplemented the efforts of the Indian Coast Guard to intercept the boat. However, before the trawler could be captured, the crew blew up the boat. With the explosion, the suicide mission was over, thankfully without any damage. The vessel sank and along with it the clues of the terrorists and their mission. But by then, many officers in various intelligence and security agencies had burnt the midnight oil.
COASTAL CHALLENGES
Safeguarding atomic power plants, oil platforms, military bases and industrial centres
Thwarting organised gangs and smuggling of arms, explosives and narcotics
Stopping infiltration of migrants and refugees from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh
* India’s geo-strategic position with a 7,516km-long coastline and the strategic relevance of Indian Ocean demand attention of the intelligence agencies
* Since the 26/11 attacks, steps have been taken to strengthen the three-tier security in India’s maritime zones—the Navy protects the outermost tier from the coast, the Coast Guard protects the intermediate layer, and the marine police secure the innermost tier, from the coast up to 12 nautical miles
* Joint Operation Centres (JOCs) and radar stations monitor maritime activity in the near-seas
* Fishermen are registered and given ID cards; they are considered the “eyes and ears” of coastal security
* With neighbouring countries sparring over control of seas and maritime threats challenging national security, the Intelligence Bureau is giving coastal intelligence greater push
* IB’s coastal desk will have a joint director and other officials who will focus on gathering coastal intelligence and liaison between agencies
