Who bombed the Hilton? (8 page)

In 1971 local police raid the Ananda Marga headquarters in Ranch, Bihar State, and Sarkar's residence. The Indian police allege that in the course of the searches they discover bombs, firearms and ‘lethal weapons'.
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During this investigation the police receive further information connecting Sarkar to a hitherto unsolved multiple murder in which six tortured and mutilated bodies were found tied to trees deep in a forest. The murder case is re-opened and on intelligence from ex-sect members, including Sarkar's ex-wife, Sarkar is arrested for the murders. The victims, all Ananda Marga disciples who had become disenchanted with the sect, were part of a killing spree allegedly carried out by Sarkar and his followers. Sarkar is put on trial, found guilty and jailed.

Thereafter, so goes the report, once all legal means to release Sarkar have failed, the fanatical members of the sect mount a violent campaign to secure their leader's freedom. Amongst other things they are accused of a successful 1975 grenade attack against a senior Indian government minister that killed him and two others, and a failed attempt on the life of the Chief Justice of India when sect members were caught throwing grenades into his car. Fortunately, the grenades did not explode.

The Indian authorities warn Interpol that ‘until 1975, the criminal activities of the fanatical group of Anand Margiis [sic] have been confined to India'. However, they add — and now one can get a sense of how they really feel —:

They refer to an ‘incident' in New Zealand involving six Margiis — two American nationals, two citizens of New Zealand (one of Indian origin), one Italian national and one Australian citizen, which ‘should be an eye-opener'. The Margiis are reported to have stolen explosives, kidnapped a police officer and planned to blow up the Indian High Commission. The Americans are deported and the others imprisoned for between two and four years.

Our unnamed Indian source ends with this warning:

Stirring stuff, and if the Margiis did plant the bomb at the Hilton two years later, wonderfully prophetic. But — and this is a big but — from the get-go Sarkar has proclaimed not only his innocence but that the Indian Government, under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, has been out to get him and his followers by any means possible. On 4 July 1975, her government declares a State of Emergency and bans the Ananda Marga from operating in India on the basis that their activities are prejudicial to the national interest. Sect members
argue that Sarkar has been set up for the murders and all the attacks in India blamed on the Margiis have in fact been carried out by the Indian secret service.

It is here that things get even more complicated. One of the most confounding aspects of the sect in the mid to late 1970s is its members' extremely vocal and increasingly strident assertions that the acts of violence carried out in the name of the Margiis are in fact part of an elaborate conspiracy driven by the Indian CBI in cahoots with the KGB to discredit the religion on a global scale.

In the Ananda Marga's allegations this conspiracy takes the form of the Indian CBI, possibly with the KGB, impersonating a violent inner cell or sister group of Ananda Marga or Prout called UPRF (Universal Proutist Revolutionary Federation), who commit violence or threaten violence against Indian officials or institutions in Australia and around the world in the guise of a continuing campaign to have Sarkar released from jail. These acts and threats of violence are not supported by the Margiis or Proutists and are in fact orchestrated in such a way as to erode the credibility of the sect — who oppose violence — and thereby damage their legitimate and legal attempts to have Sarkar released.

In the opinion of the Indian CBI and the Indian Government, this scenario is a complete invention — a kind of double blind to terrorise the Indian
Government and simultaneously curry favour with adherents, particularly the growing counter-culture movement in the West. What better way to attract adherents than to present the sect as virtuous and persecuted?

So far, so good. The finger-pointing is nicely balanced. It's clear to Norm that ASIO and the Australian Government don't simply take the Indian Government's accusations at face value. Despite India's banning of the sect in 1975, the Ananda Marga in Australia, and indeed in most of the West, is recognised as a legitimate religion. In Australia, state and federal governments extend the sect financial assistance for their schools in New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia, and register their marriage celebrants. Who is to say what Indira Gandhi's government was really up to when it imposed a State of Emergency from 1975 to 1977? Perhaps they were attempting to discredit the sect. It's possible.

It's in 1977 that things get even more confounding. Early in the year Gandhi's government — which instigated the State of Emergency for two years, during which the Margiis and other groups were banned — is crushed by Desai's Janata Party in a victory of democracy over dictatorship.
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On winning the election, Desai's government immediately lifts the ban on the sect and agrees to review Sarkar's conviction. Indeed so committed is this government to righting the wrongs
of the previous government that they arrest Indira Gandhi herself and get rid of 75 per cent of the secret service personnel.
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However, while the position of Sarkar and the Ananda Marga is decidedly improving, they are dealt a severe setback in July 1977 when the attempt to have Sarkar's case re-opened unexpectedly fails.

At that moment the ground rules completely shift. Prior to the ban being lifted, almost all the protest activities associated with the sect in Australia and the West have taken the form of demonstrations, posters and graffiti. After the July 1977 ruling, things abruptly change. A wave of violence and threats of violence rains down on Indian officials across the world. Accompanying this is the same pattern of denial from Margii spokesmen.

One of the oddities about these acts of violence and the declarations of denial that flare suddenly in 1977 is that despite the radical change of government in India, the Ananda Marga continue to claim that they are being set up and maligned by the same enemy government agents. In short, that the instigators behind the violence remain the Indian CBI and the KGB.

An Australian campaign of terror

In Australia on 24 August 1977, a few weeks after Sarkar failed to have his case re-opened in India, Ananda Marga member Paul Alister, then going by the name O'Callaghan, walks into the Air India building on Elizabeth Street in the Sydney CBD, places a pig's head on the counter and begins throwing plastic bags filled with blood on the ceiling, walls and carpet (fine $600 or 120 days in prison) and on the trousers (fine $100 or 60 days in prison) of the unfortunate staff member at reception.
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Alister is subsequently arrested. Two days later a bag containing another pig's head is found inside the Indian Consulate General's office on the tenth floor of Caltex House. The next day a plate-glass window at the front of the Sydney Air India office is smashed. On the same day an Air India employee is told that there
is a bomb on Air India flight AI 1415 leaving Sydney.

A letter purporting to be from the Universal Proutist Revolutionary Federation (UPRF) claims responsibility for the Air India attacks. The letter is almost comically malevolent, made up of words cut out of newspapers. It states that if PR Sarkar is not released, ‘such action and more will continue'.
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This is the first time the UPRF claims responsibility for an act of violence in Australia. Special Branch is alerted.

Two days later, on 29 August, a fire breaks out at the chancery of the Indian High Commission in Canberra. Then on 6 September another letter arrives from UPRF claiming responsibility for the fire and stating their intention to escalate operations and ‘to begin assassinations of Indian government representatives and lackeys unless Shrii PR Sarkar is immediately and unconditionally released'.
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Unlike the first, this one (postmarked Canberra) arrives at the Ananda Marga headquarters in Sydney. Tim Anderson, the Margiis' spokesperson, sends the letter straight to the police ‘dissociating [the sect from] the fire and [denying] knowledge of the fire'.
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Harder to deny is what happens at the Indian High Commission in Canberra the following week, when military attaché Colonel Iqbal Singh is stabbed and he and his wife are abducted from their home. (Singh and his wife escape.) Ananda Marga member John William Duff is charged by the police over the
attack and the attempted abduction.
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This incident spikes the attention of police and government alike. Attacks seem to be escalating exponentially.
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Special Branch in every state begin to carefully collate reports. The federal government asks for a review and sets up a task force to investigate. ASIO starts sniffing around and begins to run agents (i.e. to recruit informants) within the Ananda Marga.
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Throughout September 1977 waves of letters from UPRF land at the homes and offices of Indian officials and at newspapers. Bricks go through windows. Indian officials are knifed by unidentified assailants. Threatening phone calls are made. The victims include Indian doctors, solicitors, nurses, consuls and their wives and children.
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The message in the letters is consistent: ‘Our programme is clear and simple — regular and systematic assassination of any worker in your high commissions, consulates, trade offices and Air India throughout the world until Shrii PR [Sarkar] is unconditionally released.'
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The letters, which frequently turn up at home addresses, are particularly unpleasant — apart from the usual demand for the release of Sarkar, and $100 000 to be paid to the Ananda Marga, they also include, as Special Branch Detective Toms delicately puts it, threats of ‘rape-death'.
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One letter disgorges pornographic clippings and another includes, along with a death list of 30 Indian doctors, solicitors and businessmen,
warnings that ‘we will start with your kids — prustitute [sic] and kill' and signs off with ‘Do not panic. Our attack will be anyday [sic] even after months when I diots ci re you [sic] will think everything has settled. We will get you — your embasy [sic] cools how long police stand by?'
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While reports start to trickle in about similar attacks and similar letters around the world, Special Branch focuses on what is occurring in Australia. This will prove to be highly problematic in the months to come.

By the end of September 1977 the Indian expat population in Australia is completely terrorised. Whether it's the Ananda Marga or, as the sect claims, the Indian secret service who is reigning down the terror, the results are the same. From Mr Chand, the ‘excitable' house-boy at the Indian consul's house, to Mrs Gupte, the wife of the Indian Government tourist bureau attaché, to the 18-year-old brother of Miss Alag, a nurse, all are in a panic.
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CHOGRM is less than five months away and action needs to be taken.

Under the command of Inspector Perrin, Special Branch become hyper-vigilant. Officers are sent out to watch Ananda Marga premises and to collect statements from Indian nationals who have been threatened or attacked. They carefully type up detailed reports. There are hundreds of pages from Special Branch relating to the threats against Indians and while there
are many officers involved, the names of DC Helson, DC Henderson and DC Krawczyk are most prominent. They are the ones who interview most of the terrified Indian nationals, and they are the ones who haunt the exterior of the Ananda Marga headquarters, noting comings and goings. They trawl through the sect members' bank accounts and tenancy agreements.