FRAMED BY THE COPS HE ONCE WORKED FOR

Irshad Ali’s problem was that he had the wrong film in his head. He thought he was Salman Khan of Ek Tha Tiger when he was not even Sarabjit Singh. And after four years of intelligence work, in 2005, he was on his way to meet his handler, an Intelligence Bureau (IB) official, to pick up his last salary.

Ali, 40, a Delhi slumboy, had been a police informer since his 30s. In the food chain of security networks, a police informer is a small fry chasing other small fry. They cannot say they want to retire. When they do, there are consequences.

On December 12, 2005, a car stopped before one of Delhi’s poshest hotels. Ali greeted the IB officer he had been reporting to from early 2000s, and got in. A second later, a black mask was slipped over his head, and the car sped towards Red Fort. “‘Your brain’s turned. We’ve fattened you enough!’ I heard the IB officer say,” Ali says, recalling the incident as we meet in a coffee shop a few months after his acquittal. “For two months, I was detained in houses in the city used by IB and Special Cell as interrogation rooms.” On February 9, 2006, along with Qamran (another informer, and Ali’s cousin), they were brought before the media as Al-Badr terrorists caught in north Delhi.

Ali was in Tihar Jail from 2006 to 2009. He was acquitted in December 2016 of charges under the Explosive Substances Act, the Arms Act, and under sections of the Indian Penal Code. He and Qamran were out on bail in 2009 after the High Court heeded the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) report that proved the Special Cell’s charges were sham.

An officer of the investigating team, who had questioned Ali’s handler, says on condition of anonymity, that he had “admitted to Ali being his agent, but not that he had been framed”.

Ali says both can’t be true – if he was a police informer, he could not be a terrorist. Good cops investigating bad cops, or any other public servant, have to deal with a condition called The Consensus – so as to least disturb the status quo. “Everyone realised at some point that Ali was innocent and should be discharged but the Special Cell, however, could not be indicted. The Police’s Morale, Consensus, whatever you call it,” says the cop.

Why did Ali agree to become an informer in the first place? From 2001 to 2006, he was in the pay of IB and Special Cell; his monthly salary was ₹7,000. A cab driver, he needed to supplement the family income. “With a brother in jail on a murder charge, you have to be grateful if cops say they want you to work for them,” says Ali. There is danger in intelligence work. But because of the police association, Ali thought there was security. He also brought in a few friends and some members of his family such as Qamran, and engaged them in intelligence work. Qamran did not want to speak to the media.

Ali’s case is ironic in more ways than one. This was not a case of the police picking up the wrong man. He was the IB’s man. “And the Special Cell who, along with some IB officers, fixed Ali knew that”, says one of the cops who probed the frame-up. “He had been refusing his assignments, he didn’t want to cross the border to be trained as a militant so as to infiltrate their ranks. They just weren’t ready to let him go,” he says.

Ali says he was being asked to “indoctrinate people” and then lead the police to them. His wife Shabana also didn’t want him to cross the border as they had become parents. His daughter died when he was in jail.

He believes he was finally made the “scapegoat for the Special Cell’s inability to catch the people behind the Delhi blasts of 2005” as his usefulness as an intelligence gatherer was over.

Cops he worked with had told him often enough: “If a lime dries up, make use of its peels.” “Thoda dhamki, thoda maafi (a few threats and cajoling),” he says, had been part of his relationship with intelligence officials. But he was made to feel he was “contributing.”

“Due to Santosh Kumar of the CBI, I am a free man today,” says Ali. Kumar was part of an eight-member team investigating the Special Cell’s allegations.

In January, Ali filed a case in the Delhi High Court urging it to order the CBI to re-open their closure report in which they had recommended that police officers who had framed him be booked for criminal conspiracy. The hearing is due in March.

Ali is no longer in shock but speaks with a quiet outrage. Did he ever speak out thus in court? “You could only speak through your lawyers,” he says.

So will Ali’s be a cautionary tale for cops not to force people to continue with intelligence gathering if they don’t want to?

“You can’t use force, that’s for sure,” agrees another cop following the case.

“So will there be outrage now that people know?”

“No. People will forget.”