Delhi Police intercept, read and re-post mails of 264 persons

On the face of it there is hardly anything untoward about Delhi's General Post Office (GPO). Against a background of dark, stained furniture and cluttered rooms and corridors, khaki-clad postmen and mail sorters deal more or less enthusiastically with the correspondence of the nation's capital.

In one corner of the postal sorting hall, men in a slightly different khaki uniform go about the business with more than average enthusiasm, protected from prying eyes by plywood partitions. They are police inspectors and the job they are doing at the GPO and four other post offices in Delhi is a blatant and legally dubious intrusion into the privacy of a select list of persons.

In pursuance of the orders of Pritam Singh Bhinder, police commissioner of Delhi - orders reportedly approved by Lt-Governor Sunder Lal Khurana- 25 policemen at five main post offices have been intercepting, reading, and re-posting the mail of 264 persons.

These include six journalists, 30 advocates, 16 trade union and student leaders, three retired bureaucrats, 40 businessmen, over 100 leaders of various political parties, and 55 alleged criminals who were detained under the infamous Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) during the Emergency.

Though the list reads expectedly like a Who's Who of Mrs Gandhi's opponents, there are, reportedly, unexpected entries like Jagat Mehta, former foreign secretary, Mahesh Buch, former vice-chairman of the Delhi Development Authority, and S.B. Kumar, former judge of the Delhi High Court who was denied extension of service by the Central Government recently.

Ambitious Proposal: The top secret notification to intercept mail was issued by the Delhi police in the first week of May 1981, under the Indian Postal Act of 1893 which empowers the Government to intercept the mail of any citizen. The move had actually been initiated by Delhi police in February when Jagmohan was the Lt-Governor.

The original order sent to the Delhi administration's law department contained only four names, all leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): Vijay Kumar Malhotra, chief of the Delhi Pradesh BJP (DPBJP), Madan LaL Khurana and Arun Jaitley, general secretary and secretary of the DPBJP and Kedar Nath Sahni, former mayor of Delhi.

However, the law department rejected the request on the plea that there was no evidence on record to prove that the activities of the four were in any way a threat to internal law and order. The Delhi police lay low for a while, but revived the proposal once again in May.

This time it was considerably more ambitious, and the list had swelled to 264 persons. According to sources, the Delhi police prudently bypassed the legal department of the Delhi administration and the notification was issued after receiving the approval of the Lt-Governor.

Mistakes: Notification in hand, the police set about their spying. Unfortunately half the policemen steaming open the letters were not even matriculates and their incompetence resulted in some revelatory howlers. For example, Lal Krishna Advani, BJP general secretary, received a letter addressed to Hans Raj Gupta, former mayor of Delhi, in an envelope, which came fromThe Tribune, the Chandigarh newspaper.

Advani still does not know what happened to theTribuneletter. The mother of Arun Jaitley, a fiery student leader and former president of the Delhi University Students Union, received a letter meant for her son in an envelope addressed to her. In another case, a letter from Calcutta was received in an envelope which had been post-marked in Bombay.

Predictably, opposition leaders have pounced on the scandalous revelation. Says Advani: "Without a formal Emergency, it seems we are reverting to the ugly practices of that era. The interception of mail doesn't worry me because there is nothing in the correspondence that I would like to hide. We feel that the Government is doing this because it is feeling insecure and panicky." Adds Rabi Ray, secretary of the Lok Dal: "The whole thing reveals the fascist tendencies of the ruling party. They are doing this because their very survival is being threatened. We, along with other opposition parties, will fight for the withdrawal of the order."

No Comment: While the Opposition is all set to kick up a massive row in the next session of Parliament, the authorities are tight-lipped about the whole issue. Lt-Governor Khurana is not available for comment. Bhinder, asked about the reasons for the interception, told India Today: "I am not prepared to comment on your question. As a government servant I am bound by certain norms and codes and I am not prepared to violate them."