Who bombed the Hilton? Page 6
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’.2 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’.3 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’.4
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.5 This incident spikes the attention of police and government alike. Attacks seem to be escalating exponentially.6 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.7
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.8 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.’9 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’.10 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?’11
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.12 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.
From what I can ascertain, Special Branch is being quite thorough and fair-minded. They appear to be taking the sect’s assertion that they are being framed seriously, and write copious notes on the elaborate forensic tests that the letters are subjected to in order to determine their point of origin. They also regard some of the claims by Indian nationals with scepticism. For example, after one reported attack in Canberra, Detective Toms writes that, ‘owing to the apparent fear, and confused mental state, of the occupants there are some doubts that the actual reported incidents [a man throwing projectiles at the building] did actually occur’.13
It’s hard to imagine who would be more likely to write these absurdly misspelled moustache-twirling provocations — an Indian CBI agent or a Westernborn member of an Indian cult? Both would have been very well educated. Almost all Australian members of the Ananda Marga are drawn from universities, and CBI recruits are co-opted from the highest ranks of Indian society. There is something in the letters that smacks of undergraduate humour — a kind of parody of what one expects a revolutionary religious zealot to come up with. Trying to fathom the truth of the threats and denials becomes a mind-bending exercise. Does ‘You are dead one by one your daughters will earn for us as above’14 sound more like an Indian spy impersonating a Western member of an Indian sect or a Western member of an Indian sect impersonating an Indian spy impersonating a Western member of the sect? What is to be achieved by terrorising the expat Indian population?
There is little time to allow such thoughts to bloom. After the stabbing and attempted kidnapping of Colonel Singh, Prime Minister Fraser weighs into the debate. In his opinion, while ideally an attempt should be made to disperse the violent element of the Ananda Marga — if it exists — it is clear that such an element is ‘difficult to pinpoint’.15 That said, under the circumstances they simply have to take action ‘on the assumption that there [is] a group’ attempting ‘to precipitate violence against Indian officials, as a means of pressure on the Indian Government to release the leader of Ananda Marga who has been imprisoned on murder charges’.16
Fraser calls a meeting of all Commonwealth and state police, including Special Branch, and intelligence (ASIO) officers, along with a visiting Indian expert, for 28 September 1977. For Fraser, the information collated at this meeting confirms ‘the depth of the problem’. In response he asks that all agencies agree that ‘the pursuit, collection and interchange of information on Ananda Marga be constant and intensive to permit adequate assessment of the threat’ and that they set up a system of regular cooperation and coordination. Fraser indicates that he wants ‘sound information’ that would give the government a ‘more precise picture of the workings’ of the Ananda Marga in Australia. Both the federal and state governments provide support — both financial and in the form of licences — for a broad range of Ananda Marga activities including preschools, marriage celebrants and so on. Fraser wants to suspend any support until there is an urgent examination of the sect’s activities.17
By early October the Indian High Commission and Consul General are in urgent talks with both state and federal ministers about the spate of attacks. Detective Constables Jan Krawczyk and CL Helson of Special Branch write up an exhaustive report of 43 separate incidents of actual or threatened violence upon Australia-based Indian nationals over a period of three weeks. But despite all the threats being made in the name of Ananda Marga, the detectives keep an open mind as to the identity of the perpetrators, stating, ‘All possible inquiries are being made.’18
At the same time, ASIO’s covert operatives begin to talk.
Abhiik Kumar
Norm Sheather, in the first heady days of the investigation, is still embedded in the recent past, stretching his mind around the perplexing events of 1977. Who was making
all these threats and committing all these acts of violence against Indian nationals in Australia?
What did the Indian Government have to gain by pretending to be Margiis or Proutists and threatening their own citizens with ‘rape-death’? To ensure Sarkar stayed in jail? To justify putting him there? To discredit a marginal cult?
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) certainly has no qualms about including the Margiis on its greatest hits list that year. In a recently declassified document produced by the CIA’s National Foreign Assessment Center entitled ‘International Terrorism in 1977’, the sect is contextualised alongside other groups such as the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Japanese Red Army and the remnants of the Baader-Meinhof gang. It’s highly probable that ASIO would have been forwarded a copy of this document and that some mention of it would have been made in the briefing Sheather received after the Hilton bombing. Interestingly, while the CIA perceived an increasing trend ‘towards cooperation’ between international terrorist groups, citing the activities of Carlos the Jackal facilitating contacts between terrorist bands, they perceived no such behaviour in the Ananda Marga. It was an altogether different fish.
Violence-prone members of the Ananda Marg [sic], an Indian religious sect, conducted attacks on Indian diplomats on several continents, including the United States. To date, the group has not used weapons other than knives, although several of its sympathizers in Asia have been detained on charges of illegal possession of explosives. The group has not attacked non-Indian citizens, but its international membership suggests connections with a farflung support apparatus, and its future actions could involve unintentional victimization of other nations. Its idiosyncratic, parochial motives, however, make it unlikely that the organization would be willing to cooperate with other terrorist groups.1
‘Its idiosyncratic parochial motives’ also make it a difficult organisation to fathom and to penetrate. ASIO’s undercover agents begin to roam around the edges, attending meditation and yoga sessions. Their encounters with members are slightly unnerving — these aren’t laid-back hippies preaching free love. Many who have committed to the sect have cut themselves off completely from their families and their former lives. There is an intellectual quality to their belief system, which is rigid, controlled and tightly disciplined. It is a strictly hierarchic sect, in which orders come from the top down. The top, of course, being Sarkar (Baba), imprisoned in India. And who does Sarkar speak to about things in Australia? To the spiritual leader of the Ananda Marga in Australasia: Abhiik Kumar.
This name is probably unfamiliar to anyone who followed the sagas of Margiis Alister, Anderson and Dunn. Indeed in all the books, articles, multiple films, both documentary and dramatised, about the ins and outs of the case, decrying injustice, demanding royal commissions, arguing conspiracy over all the years, there is barely any mention of him.
And yet there he is, centre stage, the focus of inquiries in late 1977. Well, when I say centre stage, he is admittedly hard to make out at first, concealed as he is behind scrim and smoke. Even for ardent Australian devotees of the sect in 1977 he is an elusive character, revered, if not often seen. There is first up the matter of his name. Or rather, his names. He is Acharya Abhiik Kumar to the faithful, but he travels during mid to late 1977 under the name Jason Holman Alexander. That’s the name he adopted in March that year, changing it from Jon Hoffman by deed poll.2
Hoffman, born in the USA, comes to Australia to increase Ananda Marga membership in the early 1970s not long after Sarkar’s original imprisonment. He has another occasional name of Mark Randall and he has other names he will adopt officially and otherwise in the future, such as AK Brahmacarii,3 Stephen James Manly, David Hart and Michael Brandon. But right now, as ASIO and Special Branch start to pierce the gloaming, and as Norm starts to see, his names are Alexander and/or Kumar.
The first official report on him from ASIO lays out the known facts:
Alexander lives in Newtown. He has had 24 overseas trips in the last 2 years, and he possibly went to the [Ananda Marga London?] conference in July 1977. Sources of his — and indeed the organisation’s — finances are unknown. Alexander has the power to override decisions of the committee at any time on any matter. Ananda Marga membership in New South Wales is estimated at 200.4
It’s not much to go on and the membership is reverential. When engaged in chitchat they all reiterate the public statements — Margiis deplore all violence and these actions in the name of UPRF are not condoned by them.
However, the attack on Colonel Singh and his wife in September draws not only Prime Minister Fraser’s attention, it also draws out a former sect member who has information to impart. While his name is completely erased from the archive it is clear that he somehow contacted or was contacted by ASIO and arranged to speak to them on two separate occasions, 24 and 27 October 1977.
Subject informs us that he had been involved with the Ananda Marga for the last three or so years and had come to the conclusion that it was a dangerous organisation. He said he now wished to impart certain information concerning Ananda Marga because he felt the competent authorities in this country ought to know about it. He then proceeded to narrate his experience with the Ananda Marga.5
It’s quite a story, both detailed and charmingly domestic before it veers into the dark. It starts in 1974, shortly after his young son joins the Margiis’ Sunrise School in North Sydney. One day at a school fete he and his wife meet Eric Fouter, a member of the sect who invites the couple to attend an Ananda Marga meeting. After this other members take a great deal of interest in them and they are invited to join the organisation. They agree to join because ‘they felt it might help their son at school’.
Later that year he is approached by Abhiik Kumar, who asks if he would help run their 100-acre farm in Queensland. He agrees to do this on a short-term basis. By the end of the year he is asked to assist with a feasibility study relating to setting up health food shops across Australia. Again he agrees and does so for a while before giving up ‘through utter frustration’. About the same time he is approached by ‘Kapil’ (probably Hanspeter Arn, a Swiss national) about some of the ‘lads’ in the organisation getting some training in self-defence on the farm in Queensland. This time the subject declines because ‘a person known as Katutuvera’, whom he describes ‘as a psychopath’, insists that the trainees should learn how to ‘kill an opponent’. Despite his refusal to participate, he thinks that the training did eventually take place in June 1975.
Over the course of the two days, the subject’s story grows in credibility. He relates detailed and hitherto unpublicised information about the New Zealand explosives theft and kidnapping in 1975, and about the inner workings of the sect. The sect’s impenetrability owes much to the particularities of its recruitment processes. Only friends of current Margiis are asked to join, and then undergo a rigorous process of induction. This involves a month of rigid discipline, intensive fasting, instruction and cold showers at one of the sect’s schools. After this recruits are required to sever all contact with their own family and surrender all their possessions. The latter then becomes the primary source of Ananda Marga’s resources. Outstanding graduates are then selected for further ‘severe’ and rigorous training, which ‘involves unquestioned obedience to the Ananda Marga leadership’.
While embarking on this path, and after almost 18 months of membership, the subject gradually begins to be groomed by Kumar himself and admitted into the inner workings of the group. In late 1975 he is summoned to meet Abhiik Kumar. The sect leader is impressed by the subject’s staunch anticommunism, which reflects very much the position of Ananda Marga. He then asks him how far he would be prepared to go in the fight against communism and ‘whether or not he would be prepared to kill in the process’. That would depend, he replies, on ‘whether or not Australia was threatened or endangered by the communists’.
A few days later the subject is summoned once again to Kumar’s office. Abhiik
asks the subject whether he is willing to ‘cooperate in organising a political group known as Prout’. This group, of which Kapil is a member, is to be separate from Ananda Marga and its task is to nominate candidates for election to parliament and to infiltrate organisations such as trade unions, Friends of the Earth and conservation groups. I’m too busy, says the subject. Kumar then wants to know what he feels about a pornographic film being screened at a Sydney theatre. He thinks such films should be banned. Ring them up, Kumar suggests, and threaten ‘to have the theatre bombed unless the film is withdrawn’. The subject replies, ‘I’m not sure I want to go that far.’
‘You know that Baba was imprisoned in India because the bodies of defectors were found,’ says Kumar, and then adds, ‘It would be much easier to dispose of such bodies in Australia.’
The subject knows this is an explicit warning and he sets about gradually extricating himself from the sect, being careful not to antagonise them. Months pass until he ceases attending meetings altogether. It is then that Kapil reappears. He wants to know if the subject is still one of them. Of course he is, the subject replies. What does he know about explosives? Enough, he says, as he had had some training in chemistry. Then ensues a conversation about blowing up the Indian High Commission in order to bring about pressure to ‘secure the release’ of Baba. The subject, while expressing disapproval for the plot, also — probably wisely — treats the whole thing ‘like a big joke’, while he asserts that ‘he did not believe in achieving ends by such violent means’. He also adds that ‘he felt that the Ananda Marga members were not the sort of people who were capable of such an act’. Indeed he later tells the ASIO agents that ‘he used to laugh about suppositions that the Ananda Marga could carry out bombings and was sure that it would have been a hopeless bungle had they tried’.