Hamid Ansari, former vice president of India though is known for his notorious role of leaking secret information to Iranian intelligence and taking Iran’s side on a number of issues defying India’s stands, Indians are yet to know lots of his secrets that would place him amongst the top enemies of the country. Before digging into his dark secrets, let us first recall some of the disturbing facts.

As a scholar, Hamid Ansari has taken positions inconvenient to the India’s official line on Iraq and Iran. He has questioned India’s vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran’s nuclear program, where New Delhi voted against Tehran. He said that though the Indian government claimed to have acted on “its own judgement”, this was not borne out by facts.

Ansari has been accused of inviting Nusrat Mirza, a Pakistani spy agency ISI’s deep-cover agent working as journalist to travel to India – five times during 2005-2011, although he dismissed the accusations as “litany of falsehood” and claimed to have never met or invited him.

But Ansari was proven to be a damn liar when Nusrat Mirza himself told the media that he met Hamid Ansari several times and shared many sensitive and highly-classified information.

During his stay in Afghanistan as India’s ambassador, Hamid Ansari was frequently visiting Pakistan – meeting key figures in Pakistani ISI and even held secret meetings with anti-India terrorists in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK). According to credible sources, Ansari, despite being Indian envoy, was actively working against the country and was also sharing intelligence secrets with Pakistani ISI.

There also are serious allegations against Hamid Ansari during his tenure as Indian ambassador to Iran during 1990-1992. According to an ex-Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) officer NK Sood, Hamid Ansari had a crucial hand in the exposure of many field agents in the Tehran setup. This had left the lives of these agents in grave danger.

NK Sood in his 2019 tweet stated, “I was in Tehran; Iran. Hamid Ansari was the ambassador in Tehran. Ansari had played a crucial role in exposing RAW set-up in Tehran endangering lives of RAW unit members. But this very man was made Vice President for two consecutive terms”.

Sood also called for a detailed enquiry into the Ansari’s activities during the Tehran tenure and the latter’s damage to RAW.

Later in a letter to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, NK Sood stated, [Hamid Ansari], while being posted in Tehran, “not only failed to protect India’s national interest, but cooperated with the Iranian government and its intelligence agency SAVAK to cause serious dent to R&AW and its operations.

According to Sood, there were four major incidents when Indian Embassy officials, diplomats were kidnapped by SAVAK and Ansari deliberately failed in his duties to protect India’s interest.

In an interview to The Sunday Guardian, NK Soon said, “In May 1991, one Indian official, Sandeep Kapoor, was kidnapped from the Tehran airport, ostensibly by SAVAK. When the issue was brought before Ansari, he played it down despite the R&AW station chief—who was in Dubai when the incident took place, but flew back considering the emergency situation – briefing him personally on the matter. “Ansari did not take any steps to trace Kapoor, but sent a confidential report to the MEA that Kapoor was missing and that his activities were suspected in Iran as he was said to be involved with some local woman. He deliberately failed to mention that R&AW had reported about involvement of SAVAK in this case”.

Three days later, an anonymous phone call to the Indian Embassy informed the receiver that Kapoor was lying at a particular place on the road side. He was drugged, the effects of which lasted for several years. Despite R&AW’s advice to report and lodge a protest with the Iranian foreign office, Ansari did not take any action.

In August 1991, R&AW was keeping eyes on Kashmiri youths who were regularly visiting Qom, a religious center of Iran, and were taking arms training. Despite the old R&AW staff advising him not to do so, the new station chief of R&AW told Ansari about his operation. “Ansari gave the name of the officer who was handling this operation, D.B. Mathur, to the Iranian Foreign office, who passed it to SAVAK, and Mathur was picked up by them on a morning while coming to the Indian embassy. By the evening, it was clear that he had been picked up by SAVAK”.

When Hamid Ansari refused to take any concrete action, apart from registering a missing report about Mathur with the Iranian Foreign office and sharing it with Delhi without mentioning that he was likely to be picked by SAVAK, the R&AW officers, on the second day, through a scene out of a spy movie, managed to inform Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Delhi, who then told this to P.V. Narasimha Rao, the then Prime Minister, led to the release of Mathur from Evin prison, where he was kept, on the fourth day of his kidnapping, but he was given 72 hours to leave the country. Once inside the Indian Embassy, Mathur disclosed what had happened to him and how the SAVAK was already aware of the identity of NK Sood and the station chief.

According to another report published in OpIndia, NK Soon even alleged that Hamid Ansari teamed up with Ratan Sehgal, Additional Secretary in the IB to destroy Gulf units of the RAW prior to 1992 Bombay blasts. [OpIndia editor’s note: He perhaps meant 1993 blasts, but mistakenly tweeted the wrong year].

NK Sood in a tweet stated, “Ratan. Sehgal was Addl. Secretary in IB n he was later found to be working for CIA and held passing on documents to a CIA lady agent in Delhi. He should have been arrested; jailed and dismissed. But was asked to resign and allowed to go. Now he is settled in the US”.

Meanwhile, on condition of anonymity, an intelligence official said, as Pakistani ISI was aware of Hamid Ansari’s anti-Hindu mindset, it has taken full advantage of it during Ansari’s stay in Afghanistan and Iran, in extracting several key-information centering India’s military strategies as well as its counterterrorism measures particularly in the Jammu and Kashmir.

It further said, even after becoming vice president of India, Hamid Ansari was maintaining connections with Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officials thus causing unimaginable damage to India’s national interest.

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