JP in Jail: An Uncensored Account

Author’s Preface

Many feel that the Emergency of three decades vintage is ‘dead and gone.’ But it looks as if it is not only not dead, but is alive and kicking. This is the editorial that The Times of India wrote on 16 October 2004:

Emergency Chain

The Emergency is dead; long live the Emergency. Even as Rahul Gandhi admitted that there had been some excesses during the Emergency, Prasar Bharati has refused to screen a documentary on Jayaprakash Narayan supposedly because the film makes critical references to the period. Strangely enough, even those who had vigorously opposed Indira Gandhi’s Emergency – such as Lalu Prasad Yadav – are today ambivalent apologists for it. So, is the Emergency dead and buried, or is it still alive and active in a different avatar?

Among the dark powers unleashed by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, the censor stands out. He symbolised the terror and trauma of the nineteen months when Indira was India and India was Indira. The Big Brother represented authority, and by extension the state. The Emergency may have since become part of history, but censorship is still very much part of the present. In fact, the very people who faced the brunt of the Emergency now have no qualms in using it selectively. The silence of information and broadcasting minister Jaipal Reddy, who had walked out of the Congress over the imposition of the Emergency, on DD’s alleged censoring of the JP film is telling. On the other hand, Lalu Yadav has questioned the credentials of the filmmaker, Prakash Jha.

Lalu’s discovery that Indira was a great leader and she rightly insisted on discipline is in effect an endorsement of the Emergency. The railway minister would be better off if he remembers that trains then ran on time. Surely, the political class, including the Congress, has not exorcised the ghosts of the Emergency….

Advocates of the Emergency could claim that it was an experiment in guided democracy. The results were appalling - not just for the nation but for Indira herself. The curtailing of freedom only resulted in the puncturing of the democratic process. Indira paid for her folly by losing the Lok Sabha elections that followed. Later, she claimed ignorance of the excesses committed during the Emergency; censorship had limited her access to the news on ground. Three decades after, not much seems to have changed. The shadow of the censor, or should we say dictator still stalks the corridors of power!’

The Emergency and JP are inexorably intertwined with Indira Gandhi as the Queen Empress and Sanjay Gandhi as the surrogate prince.

The Emergency signaled extinction of freedom. During the nineteen months of active Emergency, freedom and fundamental rights stood suspended. People moved in hushed silence, stunned and traumatized by the Draconian goings on. Across the nation, groveling administrators, academicians, advocates and accountants vied with each other to sing paeans of glory to the Emergency rulers, some signing pledges of loyalty and servitude in blood! The bulk of the civil service crawled when asked to bend. Higher echelons of judiciary bowed to the dust and were willing to decree that under the Emergency regime citizens did not even have the right to life. Politicians of all hue and colour, barring honourable exceptions, lay supine and prostrate.

JP symbolised freedom and it was his article of faith: ‘Freedom became one of the beacon lights of my life and it has remained so ever since. Freedom with the passing of years transcended the mere freedom of my country and embraced freedom of man everywhere and from every sort of trammel – above all it meant freedom of the human personality, freedom of the mind, freedom of the spirit. This freedom has become a passion of my life and I shall not see it compromised for bread, for security, for prosperity, for the glory of the state or for anything else.’

But in the mid-seventies Prime Minister Indira Priyadarshini Nehru-Gandhi had felt totally different. She was of the ‘firm conviction’ that democracy was the enemy of development and freedom and bread cannot go together. Proclaiming loudly ‘bread is more important than liberty’ she imposed internal Emergency on a stunned nation in June 1975, taking away freedom and liberty from one-sixth of the human race and arresting JP and several other top Opposition leaders under the dreaded Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).

The eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between Indira Gandhi, the dictator and JP, the democrat, was truly on. By the time it ended in March 1977, the democrat had won, thereby transforming India’s polity. This is the story of the Emergency and even today we hear its reverberations loud and clear!

With the collapse of normal democratic governance, Mrs Gandhi wanted to use the Emergency to rejig herself as the icon of 700 million people and the unquestioned leader of the vast sub-continent of India for years to come and then pass it on to the ‘apple of her eye’ Sanjay Gandhi. Using the Emergency as a whip to ‘discipline the nation’ and building herself up as ‘Indira is India,’ she would have eminently succeeded with individuals and institutions collapsing one by one and falling by the wayside. And, barring sporadic murmurs of dissent, she had no opposition whatsoever and all roads were clear as far as the eye could see.

But God has his own way of disposing. During the initial days of the Emergency, within the confines of the yet to be commissioned Intensive Care Ward of the PGI (converted into temporary jail), JP was an old, haggard, disjointed and defeated individual, who felt that all hopes were gone and freedom in India stood extinguished. He had also mentally reconciled himself to die in confinement ‘as a prisoner of Indira Gandhi.’

But the Almighty and the ultimate arbiter had other ideas. In the manner of Moses in the Old Testament, He wanted this man, who once symbolized all that was fiery in India’s freedom struggle and all that was noble in pursuing a cause, to resurge, rise again and reemerge as the nation’s hope and the alternate icon to lead the people back to freedom and democracy. For accomplishing this, He chose an insignificant instrument in me, then the district magistrate cum inspector general of prisons of Chandigarh and therefore the custodian of ‘JP in jail.’

When I received ‘prisoner JP’ at the tarmac of Chandigarh’s Air Force base on the night of 1 July 1975, the Emergency was just a few days old. JP had been taken into custody under MISA by the district magistrate, Delhi on 25/26 June night, moved around nearby areas of Haryana and Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and was being brought to Chandigarh for safe custody and medical care. To me at that time JP was an enigma as well as a mystery. My memory of him as the ‘Hazaribagh hero’ of the forties was hazy and the perception of his recent campaign for ‘total revolution’ was rather confusing.

Yet, something in my sub-conscience told me that JP was not an ordinary man and his days in confinement would one day be part of history. As I drove back home from the PGI guest house around midnight after detaining JP there, my mind went back to the days of India celebrating Independence, when I was a tiny toddler. I vaguely remembered that in the far corner of the country where I belonged (Kanyakumari, the Land’s End of India), it was JP’s name, which was on everyone’s lips. And his name was spoken in awe and admiration.

Now also, within one year of his coming back to active public life, he had roused the people and their conscience, which was lying dormant all the while. In such a short period he had become the idol of the youth and the leader of a mass movement, which shook governments at their very foundation. There must be something extraordinary in this man and I should get to know him, I mused to myself. Besides, he is talking about ‘freedom’ and ‘honest and participatory governance’, two things, which have been dear to my heart. Though I was a civil servant administering the Emergency regime in the Union Territory, in my heart of hearts I did not like this ‘trammeling’ of freedom since I was of the firm conviction that democracy, howsoever imperfect, was the only thing we Indians could really be proud of.

So during the five months JP was in confinement in Chandigarh, I did come to know him very closely. And having understood the nobility of his struggle and the intensity of his commitment, partook in all matters concerning him and the state, shared his intimate thoughts and feelings, discussed political events and happenings, played ‘devil’s advocate,’ participated in brainstorming and strategy sessions, took charge of his mental and psychological well-being, initiated the reconciliation process between him and the prime minister and most of all succeeded in reviving his faith in himself and his people, which he was on the verge of losing. In short I became part and parcel of the transition of the ‘dare-devil hero’ of the first freedom struggle from a ‘defeated idol’ into a ‘defiant icon,’ who sixteen months later transformed India’s polity by winning the country’s second freedom.

There are several viewpoints, some of them conflicting, as to the causes that led to this sordid saga of Emergency and its outcome. But one fact is central. That is the acknowledgement of JP’s national movement against corruption and misrule that had rattled Mrs Gandhi and her government, so much as to push her into the anti-democratic step of declaring Emergency and extinguishing freedom. It is also acknowledged that despite his failing health JP relentlessly pursued the unification of Opposition political parties under one banner and led them to victory in the 1977 polls thereby restoring India to democracy.

During the freedom struggle in all JP had spent over five years in jail, which has been well chronicled by JP himself or his co-prisoners. But JP had no co-prisoners in Chandigarh since it was detention in the ward of a super-specialty hospital declared as jail. JP did try and keep a diary of events in between bouts of demoralization, depression and ill health, but could manage only fifty-nine days of entry during the 139 days he was in detention. And most of these entries are patchy and brief.

While the Emergency drama was for the whole world to see, the privilege of witnessing the intense struggle of the ‘revolutionary in chains’ was only mine. Not only did I see, I felt it and for a while I was part of it.

Emergency and its excesses, and the arrogance of power displayed by Emergency masters and minions are all public knowledge. So also the outcome of the 1977 polls that defeated the forces of fascism. But what is not known is the silent saga of defiance and determination within the four walls of a PGI ward turned jail, which eventually opened up the floodgates of freedom and transformed India’s polity. This book is the true story of this silent saga.

This was the saga that director-producer Prakash Jha was trying to capture as part of his Telefilm Loknayak (People’s Leader) that he produced for the state owned TV channel Doordarshan. This film was scheduled for nationwide telecast on 11 October 2004, the 102 birth anniversary of JP, but was pulled out at the last moment by the present pro-Emergency rulers. Instead an internal letter sent from Prashar Bharati to Ministry of Culture was faxed to Prakash Jha.

1. The latter part of the film (pertaining to Emergency) does not portray a balanced presentation of the event of those times and in view of the sensitivities involved, the programme needs modifications.

2. The map of India shown in the beginning does not show the geographical boundaries of undivided India correctly.

3. Audio in the following frames needs to be edited:

a. Tanashahi ka shikar hua (victim of repressiveness)

b. Indira hatao (remove Indira) slogan

c. Sanjay Gandhi had a motive

d. Jail mein kyon maren, bahar maren (let JP not die in jail but outside).

e. Tanashahiwala rajya nahi chalega (A repressive state will not last)

f. Indiraji ne JP ke sath jo zyadati ki (Indira’s maltreatment of JP)

g. The last portion of Mr Devasahayam byte needs to be deleted.

4. Need to impose Emergency and counterpoint also should be brought out.

5. Opinionated views need to be balanced with views from all political shades.

6. Recollections of those in close touch with JP like Dr J.K. Jain who was his personal physician for forty years will enhance our understanding.

7. Longish scenes of Hazaribagh Jail escape and Diwali celebrations are over dramatized and need to be curtailed.

8. Credit caption of the Ministry of Culture which has funded the project should come in the beginning along with the credits of producer and Prasar Bharati.

The present government at the Centre, which is a coalition of erstwhile pro and anti-Emergency forces, has obviously resorted to ‘Emergency style’ self-conceited censoring and gag order to cook up history and distort facts to mislead the people of India, particularly those of the younger generation. Initially Prakash Jha rose in revolt and rejected the censorship attempt lock, stock and barrel and then conceded to condition 3(g).

Now therefore is the time to tell the truth of the most important chapter of Emergency that concerned JP, the state’s enemy No. 1. It is also time to open up the wounds for the older generation to remember and the new ones to see as to how the nation had been bleeding during the Emergency and how freedom and democracy, which they all take for granted, was extinguished by their very keepers, but was restored by the indomitable spirit and sacrifice of a patriot called JP.

True to the desire of the modern day censors, this book would give a factual ‘balanced presentation of the events of those times.’ This first-person narrative is authentic enough to provoke former attorney general Soli Sorabjee to ask me point blank: ‘Mr Devasahayam, for what all you have done, how is it that you yourself escaped being arrested under MISA?’ Well, I had answered ‘one has to be thankful for small mercies!’

The book is dedicated to all those who continue to value freedom as a passion and would not compromise it for bread, security, prosperity, glory of the state or for anything else.

This story is no doubt for the intellectual elite, the bulk of whom intimidated by state tyranny, betrayed JP when he needed them most. But more so, this is for the common man who listened to the feeble yet eloquent voice of JP and rose with him to defeat autocracy and restore democracy to this ‘land of eternal suffering.’

1

From Democracy to Autocracy -

India under Emergency

At the dawn of 26 June 1975, Union Territory of Chandigarh was so normal that I had gone for my usual morning tennis work out and was back home around 8 a.m. My wife Aspil informed me that M.L. Bhanot, Senior Superintendent of Police had called and had said it was urgent. As was my wont, I switched on the radio to listen to the morning news. But instead of news, I heard a tight and tense voice of Mrs Indira Gandhi addressing the nation and saying something about ‘grave threat to the country and the need for drastic steps’. I felt that something was amiss and called up Bhanot to find out what was happening. What he told me shook me a bit.

Like in the rest of the nation, the night of 25-26 June has been one of high drama at Chandigarh though on a mini-scale. It reflected the deep depravity into which the governance of the country had been pushed in the name of ‘national security’. On verbal directions from the Delhi Durbar, Giani Zail Singh, Chief Minister of Punjab had called up Mr N.P. Mathur, Chief Commissioner of Chandigarh past midnight to say that Emergency had been declared and press had to be severely disciplined. He was specific that The Tribune should be sealed and should not be allowed to come out that morning. Zail Singh even wanted the arrest of Mr Madhavan Nair, infirm but fiercely independent editor of The Tribune, a household name in the Northwestern states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.

Deeply rattled, Mathur called Union home secretary Mr S.L. Khurana, who had no clue as to what was happening. The same was the response from Mr Srinivasa Varadan, Additional Home Secretary. Mathur’s attempts to contact the Union home minister Brahmananda Reddy and minister of state Om Mehta did not bear fruit. As chief commissioner, Mathur was head of the Chandigarh Union Territory and should get orders or instruction from Government of India and not chief minister of Punjab. Mathur would have been in the right if he had ignored the instructions and carried on as usual. At best he could have called me and passed on the buck since as district magistrate, I was responsible for law and order and issuance of orders if any regarding the sealing of The Tribune or arresting its editor.

In his despair, Mathur obviously forgot these minor procedures and instead called Bhanot and passed on the instructions of Zail Singh. Bhanot was certainly not willing to carry out the wishes of the Punjab chief minister blindly. Nevertheless he went through the motion of going to The Tribune premises and advised those on duty not to print any news unpalatable to the ‘powers-that-be.’He also posted a small posse of policemen to keep a watch on the press.

Obviously this did not have much impact on The Tribune and the morning paper came out as usual. This infuriated another chief minister residing in Chandigarh – Chaudhry Bansi Lal of Haryana. In his inimitable style he threatened that if Chandigarh administration was not willing to raid The Tribune, seal its premises and arrest its editor, he will get it done through the Haryana Police. For this purpose he would not even hesitate to ‘takeover’ The Tribune premises and buildings if need be! Indeed, the heady brew of the Emergency had commenced its task of intoxicating!

I as the district magistrate had been kept in the dark about the happenings during the hours of darkness. I made a mental note that this was not going to happen again lest governance got messed up in the name of Emergency. Information was trickling in about the nocturnal signature of the President declaring Emergency without Union Cabinet’s endorsement and the preventive detention of top leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan, Morarji Desai, Atal Behari Vajpayee and others even before the declaration was signed. Though news censorship had been clamped, The Tribune was displaying in their spot news the arrest of JP and Morarji Desai. As we in the Chandigarh administration – chief commissioner N.P. Mathur, home secretary G.V. Gupta, legal remembrancer A.P. Chaudhury, senior superintendent of police M.L. Bhanot and self, district magistrate M.G. Devasahayam – got together for the first Crisis Group meeting, we were clueless as to what was happening and what we need to do.

With rumors spreading like wild fire there was the danger of law and order situation in the city going out of control. Prompted by the Delhi Durbar, both chief ministers were breathing down our neck and could virtually take over the administration and also seal The Tribune if they decided to gang up. To ward off these eventualities I decided to take charge despite absence of any official communication from the Central Government regarding imposition of the Emergency or any other instruction. I swiftly obtained a copy of the Emergency notification from deputy director, Intelligence Bureau, Chandigarh:

To be Published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary

Part II - Section 3 - Sub-section (I)

No. II/16013/1/75-S&P (D.II)

Government of India / Bharat Sarkar

Ministry of Home Affairs / Grih Mantralaya

New Delhi 110001, dated 26 June 1975.

Notification

G.S.R. 353(E). The following Proclamation of Emergency by the President of India, dated 25 June 1975, is published for general information:

Proclamation of Emergency

In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (1) of Article 352 of the Constitution, I, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, President of India, by this Proclamation declare that a grave emergency exists whereby the security of India is threatened by internal disturbances.

Sd/- F.A. Ahmed

President

New Delhi, 25 June 1975.

Sd/-

(S.L. Khurana)

Secretary

New Delhi, 26 June 1975.

Moving fast I imposed prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code throughout the Union Territory. On my recommendation Mr S.K. Tuteja, Director, Public Relations, Chandigarh administration was appointed as censor officer, invoking the provisions of Defense of India rules. A Joint Planning Committee was constituted under the Internal Security Scheme for continuous monitoring of events.

By evening things were getting clearer and some instructions on Emergency and censorship had come. S.V. Bedi, Senior Correspondent of The Tribune along with Lt. Gen. P.S. Gyani, Trustee called on Mathur and promised to adhere to the censorship rules. This and the other steps initiated by us helped in warding off the onslaughts from Zail Singh and Bansi Lal, both vying for the privilege of being close to the Delhi Durbar.

Initial defiance to the Emergency came in different shapes. The sense of stupor on the face of the people, the choice epithets against the Emergency masters and the ‘sound of silence’ by the press. The Tribune was published with bland censored news. Hindi and Urdu newspapers from Jullundur came out with blank pages with the words ‘censor ka bendh’ (gift of the censor) printed in all pages. Hindustan Times from New Delhi left the entire editorial column blank, reminiscent of pre-independence days of struggle against alien rule. Veer Pratap, a Hindi daily from Jullundur was more poignant. On the 26 June issue the editorial page was blank with an Urdu couplet rubber stamped all over. Translated it meant: ‘I can neither anguish nor petition; it is my fate to choke and die.’

As news of ‘Emergency in action’ started coming in, one was left with the feeling that the country’s hard earned freedom from foreign hegemony was being extinguished and a parliamentary democracy was being turned into personal autocracy. As the Constitution of India, particularly the fundamental rights stood suspended, citizens had no personal liberty. Citizens did not even have the ‘right to live’ as later ruled by the honorable Supreme Court! Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), enacted in the wake of Indo-Pak War 1971 was amended to vest district magistrates with awesome powers to arrest and detain any one without showing cause. All that needed to be done was to compile a reasonable dossier of activities injurious to law & order or ‘security of the state.’

We, the bunch of bureaucrats running the Chandigarh administration had nothing to prove and no laurels to seek from the political masters. So we decided to be very objective and cautious in exercizing the Emergency powers particularly that of preventive detention under MISA. The decision was not to arrest any one under MISA unless there was indisputable and convincing evidence of threat to law and order or security of the state. In the initial days Chandigarh Police confined themselves only to routine rounding up of anti-social elements under Section 107/151 of Cr.P.C.

Though we went through the Internal Security drill with special instructions to college principals and Punjab University authorities to remain vigilant, the quiet and the silence was jarring. Emergency was nowhere in evidence and everything was calm and quiet. Only that one could discern an undercurrent of fear and anxiety in the minds of the people as they went about their routine chores.

The Emergency was bad in itself. But the worst thing is that it ripped apart the delicately crafted and carefully nurtured democratic fabric of a poor nation, wherein lived one-sixth of the human race. Basic violations of the democratic spirit and the crude attempts to legitimize a new type of regime and new criteria of allocation of rights and obligations were more central to what the Emergency was about than arrest and torture of a few thousand individuals. It was the abrogation of any sense of boundary or restraint in the exercise of power, and the striking growth of arbitrariness and arrogance with which citizens were turned into subjects that was at issue.

Far more pertinent than this act of imposition of an Emergency regime is the manner in which the nation almost capitulated, to a man, with so few exceptions in such a vast land. There were no doubt protests and acts of both courage and imagination. All these were individual ‘heroics’, which is all that these individuals could do. But they hardly had any great impact on the course of things. But there was one individual called Jayaprakash Narayan and the action of this individual did have great impact not only on India’s polity but on the country’s history as well.

2

JP in Chandigarh –

‘A prisoner in despair’

On the morning of 1 July 1975, Tuteja dropped in my office and said that something was brewing in Delhi and the ‘most important leader in custody’ would be my honored guest at PGI. I did not take it seriously, but nevertheless called Dr P.N. Chuttani, Director PGI for confirmation. He was down with flu and had no clue. He wished the news was not true since it would spoil his ‘golf holiday’ to Gulmarg scheduled for the next week! I left it at that.

Suddenly there was flurry of activities and telephone calls back and forth leading to our Crisis Group meeting at 6 p.m. What Tuteja mentioned about ‘floating news’ in the morning now became official instruction. Jayaprakash Narayan, ‘Enemy No. 1’ of the state and the most prominent leader in detention was being shifted to Chandigarh and he would be brought in a special aircraft that evening itself. Mathur was excited and a bit surcharged. Obviously, because Mathur had worked with JP during the Bihar famine and they belonged to the same kayastha caste. Instructions from the Union home ministry were that JP was to be received at the Chandigarh airport and put up at the PGI.

We – Gupta, Bhanot and me – swung into action and within minutes landed at the PGI guest house where JP would be lodged pending regular arrangement. Dr Y.N. Mehra, ENT Specialist and Superintendent of the Nehru Hospital attached to the PGI was already there along with his team. We had a quick conclave and instructions were given to spruce up the main bedroom on the ground floor, repair the air conditioner and vacate the adjacent room and the building opposite all in a jiffy. Within minutes work started in full swing.

We quickly firmed up the security and policing arrangements. It was decided to notify the guest house as temporary jail under Section 417 Cr.P.C. and post jail officials at the inner perimeter. Police was to man the outer perimeter and provide the necessary security. As a matter of abundant caution it was decided to disconnect the telephone line.

The ETA of the flight bringing JP was 9.30 p.m. at the Air Force technical bay. Therefore we had enough time to listen to Mrs Gandhi’s address to the nation unveiling her famous ‘20-point Economic Programme’ meant to transform India’s economy and banish poverty from its soil. It was a typical case of packing ‘old wine in new bottle’ and a wish list of clichés. This rehashed programme was to serve as the ‘economic balm’ for the political body blow delivered in the form of the Emergency. This document became the ‘Bible of sycophants’ and a convenient cover to justify the ravaging of India’s democracy under the slogan ‘bread is more important than freedom.’

After listening to the PM’s discourse, Bhanot and myself reached the Air Force station at 9.15 p.m. Station commander, air commodore Bhasin and his colleague wing commander Nanda were already there. We briefed them about the mission and who was coming since they had no information. They told us about the delay in the flight and the revised ETA of 10.30 p.m. The wait was long and we spent the time strolling on the runaway.

At 10.35 p.m. the aircraft landed and we were on the tarmac near the ladder. First the superintendent of police from Delhi accompanying JP came down to hand over the relevant papers to his counter part in Chandigarh. Then I saw the frail old man coming down the steps clad in immaculate white. I shook hands with JP introducing others and myself in the reception team. I felt that the old man was perplexed and my introductions had not registered with him.

My staff car pulled in near the ladder and I asked JP to sit inside as I attended to the paper work like the transfer warrant (D – 1) at the lounge. When I returned after five minutes JP was still standing outside, leaning on the door of the car. He was concerned about the safety of his luggage consisting of two brief cases. The SP from Delhi showed both the bags to JP and put them in the luggage boot. We proceeded to the PGI guest house accompanied by Dr M.L. Bhatia who had come from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and reached at about 11 p.m.

The guest house was ready in all respects. Dr Mehra and his team along with the jail doctor conducted a quick medical check up on JP and found everything OK. They also had discussion with Dr Bhatia. Since JP said that he had his meal we took leave of him after assigning the guest house caretaker and one of my orderlies (Manohar Lal) to attend to the old man. JP asked me whether I was going back to Delhi. I clarified that I was the district commissioner of Chandigarh and Bhanot was the Senior Superintendent of police. Now JP understood and profusely apologized for the mix up.

I had a brief meeting with executive magistrate Mohinder Singh, who was also the superintendent of Chandigarh sub-jail, R.D. Sharma, Assistant Superintendent of jail, the deputy superintendent of police (headquarters) and law officials and formally signed the orders declaring the PGI guest house as sub-jail enabling jail officials to take charge of the inner perimeter.

During our meetings in the evening Gupta had conveyed the directive from Delhi Durbar that on ‘depositing’ JP at the PGI guest house, I should report to Mr Bansi Lal, the then Chief Minister of Haryana and a key member of the ruling Emergency coterie. As I returned home my wife told me that Bansi Lal had called and left message that I should talk to him urgently. When I called him up, his attitude was haughty and his instructions were terse, ‘ye salah apne aapko hero samajtha hai. Vus ko wahin pade rehne do. Kisi se milne ya telephone karne nahin dena. Aap hi kadam ho jayaga’ (This damn fellow thinks he is a hero. Let him lie there. Don’t allow him to meet anybody or telephone any one. He will be finished this way). The same night Gupta conveyed to me another message from Bansi Lal that JP should not be allowed to take a walk in the open between sunrise and sunset. Though this callous attitude and crude language of Bansi Lal as well as his direct interference put me off, I did not give it much importance. But later events were to reveal as to how ominous these remarks and these instructions turned out to be!

I was at the PGI guest house early next morning. JP was sitting in his room in spotless white kurta. He received me with a warm handshake though he did not recognize as to who I was. I had to introduce myself all over again. On my query about his health, JP replied that he was feeling all right except for some fatigue, since he did not sleep well being a new place. He volunteered information that his health problems were cardiac trouble and diabetes, but both were under control. He expressed his distress about the inability to take a good morning walk and being in a guest house would be lonely. He suggested shifting to a ward where he could have company