India Trains Terrorists

Concrete Evidence of India Training Terrorists

 Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka: written by Rohan Gunaratna

The first concrete piece of evidence that India was subverting Sri Lanka came from a small group youth arrested by the Sri Lanka security forces in Jaffna. However the details of interrogation were not divulged for reason unknown, perhaps political or even diplomatic ones.

When the sequence of events was later reconstructed, this is how it had happened: a specially hand-picked group of youth, who had come to Tamil Nadu as refugees from Trincomalee was taken to New Delhi. There, they were trained in the use of 9mm pistols, AK-47 rifles and the Indian SMG (sub-machine guns) of Indian make; in the manufacture of parcel bombs and the laying of booby traps; the use of radio communication through the Morse Code to secret letter-writing; identification of ranks; assessing the moments, strength of troops and vehicles in a camp; conducting surveillance and counter-surveillance; and in cultivating informants and collecting strategic information.

This group was taken from New Delhi to the Bombay harbor, and taught how to identify ships by flags and by form. They were trained specially in the identification of the destroyers, cruisers, minesweepers, gun boats, missile cruisers, missile boats, torpedo boats, aircraft carriers, submarines, oil tankers and passenger ships. They were instructed as to the manner in which they should pass the information from Trincomalee to Madras. This involved a New Delhi Post Office Box number.
[According to the Thomas A. Marks, a US military analyst, Indira Gandhi was very concerned about the developments in Trincomalee and the Indian RAW responded by training militants to monitor the possible US involvement in Trincomalee.]

They were returned to Tamil Nadu and then sent to Jaffna with few rupees. Most of the members of this group were from Trincomalee. The operation failed because Jaffna was new; an alien land to them. Within a few hours, before they could return to India or get back to Trincomalee, the security forces received information that there were strangers in Jaffna who did not know their where about-they were soon apprehended and interrogated, and the information extracted was passed onto Colombo. Interestingly, the captured militants had identified a sign board in New Delhi as a landmark where the initial training was conducted. When Colombo informed the Sri Lanka High Commission in New Delhi to locate the board, the Indians promptly removed it. [Sri Lanka High Commission, New Delhi, 1986; diplomatic source]
Initial training was made available at three locations- Chakrata near Dehra Dun in Uttara Pradesh, Ramakrishapuram in New Delhi, and at a location near the Delhi International Airport.

The location of Chakara was the most secretive. Previously, it was a top secret military complex code named “Establishment Two Two” (written as ‘Establishment 22’) where RAW with CIA jointly trained Tibetan Kampas to subvert Chinese occupied Tibet. This was later converted into a base exclusively for the Sri Lanka Operation. After, the number of locations within India reserved for training Sri Lankan Tamil militants grew, and several other military and paramilitary institutions were co-opted for this purpose. Eight camps in three north Indian locations which were managed by RAW trained 350 TELO cadres, 200 EROS cadres and 70 PLOTE cadres.

Above is an extraction from the book title “Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka” written by Rohan Gunaratna in the year1993. [ISBN 955-95199-0-5]