CALCUTTA, 22 December 2004 — An Indian Muslim covicted on spying charges and jailed in Pakistan for 22 years has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to clear his dues and rehabilitate him.

Two years ago, Mehboob Elahi’s threat to swallow cyanide or shoot himself outside Parliament had turned the spotlight on spies who are regularly sent to Pakistan by Indian intelligence organizations and then forgotten.

But security agencies physically prevented Mehboob from killing himself outside Parliament or then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s residence in New Delhi. Now he has sent an SOS to Manmohan.

Mehboob, who belongs to Calcutta, is also demanding justice for dozens of other low-ranking spies who have returned after serving their sentences in Pakistan and has urged New Delhi to expedite through diplomatic channels the release and repatriation of hundreds of Indian intelligence agents and prisoners of war still languishing in Pakistani jails.

By all accounts, unlike secret service officers who operate from embassies under diplomatic cover, spies such as Mehboob are not government employees and yet undertake dangerous missions abroad at grave personal risk to earn money.

“They are recruited informally by premier intelligence organizations like the army’s directorate of military intelligence, the Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing or Special Services Bureau and sent to neighboring countries, particularly nuclear rival Pakistan, as field agents to collect defense-related information”, says former spy Mohan Lal Bhaskar, who wrote Under the Shadow of Bayonets after he was repatriated from Pakistan.

Inside Pakistan, they are generally assigned to track movement of troops and armaments such as field guns, anti-aircraft guns and other pieces of artillery.

Most of them, security sources say, can easily tell the difference between 110mm and 155mm field guns. Training includes lessons in map-reading and photography.

But as there is nothing in writing, it is easy for their handlers to promptly disown them if they are caught.

Intelligence agencies invariably wash their hands of a spy once he is arrested and tried. They also stonewall any attempt by his family to claim payments.

The very men who lured them into the cloak-and-dagger shadowy world often deny even those spies who return after serving their jail sentence their dues and compensation.

Those in the know say Mehboob is neither the first nor the last victim of India’s callous and uncaring intelligence establishment.

“I gave the best years of my life to the country. But I have got nothing in return,’ said Mehboob, who was apparently sent to Pakistan as an agent of the directorate of military intelligence in the early 1970s. He turned out to be an outstanding agent. He not only acquired a new identity abroad with the help of his relatives in Karachi but even managed to join the Pakistan Army.

His luck ran out in 1977 when he was betrayed by another Indian spy who had been won over by the Pakistanis. He was tortured, convicted of spying activities under the Pakistan Army Act and Official Secrets Act and jailed.

Thanks to a Pakistan Human Rights Commission initiative, he was released from prison in 1999 and sent home to his parents, five brothers and four sisters. Since then, countless petitions for settling his dues and payment of compensation have been ignored by authorities in India. Not only are his dues still unpaid but all his efforts to get a pension have proved equally futile.

His chest and back are filled with the scars of torture. Newspapers have highlighted his physical condition but it has not stirred the government’s conscience. “I have been moved from one hell to another. That’s all,” said Mehboob, who has spent the past three years running from pillar to post.

“Let alone make arrangements for my rehabilitation, government officials and politicians did not offer even a glass of water when I knocked at their doors for justice.”

By Mehboob’s estimate, there are 600 Indian spies and prisoners of war languishing in jails across Pakistan. He attributes the figure to Pakistan human rights officials he spoke to. And an equal number of Pakistanis are reportedly held indefinitely in prisons across India.