Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone, and today we're going to be taking
Speaker 1: a journey to a different part of the world in
Speaker 1: the world of espionage. We're going to go to India.
Speaker 1: We've covered a lot in England and some in France,
Speaker 1: and of course a lot in the US. But we're
Speaker 1: not the only countries with spies, so I thought it
Speaker 1: might be interesting to see other spy stories from around
Speaker 1: the world. Today we're looking at the Black Tiger, the
Speaker 1: raw spy who became a Pakistani major. Ravandra Koshik was
Speaker 1: born on April eleven, nineteen fifty two, in Rajasthan, a
Speaker 1: town that sits near the border. His father served in
Speaker 1: the Indian Air Force. The Wars of sixty five and
Speaker 1: seventy one were not distant history for him. There were
Speaker 1: the background noise of childhood. In college, he studied commerce,
Speaker 1: but what stood out was his stage presence. He liked
Speaker 1: to act and he liked to debate, something that intelligence
Speaker 1: officers noticed. In nineteen seventy three of twenty one, he
Speaker 1: told his family he was taking a job in Delhi.
Speaker 1: Stead he entered two years of training with the Research
Speaker 1: and Analysis Wing. They taught him Urdu. They taught him
Speaker 1: the rhythms of Pakistani life. He underwent circumcision. Every official
Speaker 1: Indian record of his existence was eventually erased, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five he crossed into Pakistan as Nabi Ahmen Shakhir.
Speaker 1: He enrolled at Karachi University and completed a law degree.
Speaker 1: Then he entered the Pakistan Army, not as a frontline officer,
Speaker 1: but as a clerk in the military accounts department. Over
Speaker 1: time he rose to the rank of major. From nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five to nineteen eighty three, he lived the life completely.
Speaker 1: He was married, they had a son. To his wife
Speaker 1: and colleagues, he was a Pakistani Muslim working inside the
Speaker 1: military system. To raw he was a pipeline the intelligence.
Speaker 1: He passed troop movements, logistical details, a kind of persistent
Speaker 1: in reporting that shapes decisions. Earned him the informal title
Speaker 1: Black Tiger from Indira Gandhi. For nearly eight years, the
Speaker 1: cover held as part of the story that still feels
Speaker 1: almost unreal, total immersion, day after day, year after year,
Speaker 1: while knowing a single slip could end everything. In September
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty three, the end came through another agent.
Speaker 1: Ross sent a low level operative named yat Masi to
Speaker 1: re establish contact with Koshuk. Pakistani counterintelligence caught Masi. Under pressure,
Speaker 1: he gave up the identity of the man he was
Speaker 1: supposed to meet. Issi arranged a meeting in a park.
Speaker 1: When Kashak arrived, they arrested him. What followed was not
Speaker 1: pleasant interrogation and torture. In Salkot, accounts described two years
Speaker 1: of sustained pressure. He never broken the sense of turning
Speaker 1: against India. In nineteen eighty five, at Pakistani court, suddenced
Speaker 1: him to death. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.
Speaker 1: He spent the next sixteen years moving between prisons. At
Speaker 1: this stage he was in nineteen he was thirty two.
Speaker 1: He was being moved from Salkot to kot law Pot
Speaker 1: to finally Central Jail in my own wally. From inside,
Speaker 1: he managed to smuggle letters to his family in India.
Speaker 1: The tone is not heroic. It is exhausted and bitter,
Speaker 1: and one he had asked in essence whether this was
Speaker 1: but people who sacrifice for a large country like India receive.
Speaker 1: In another written near the end, he said that if
Speaker 1: he had an American agent, he would have been out
Speaker 1: in three days. His health collapsed under the conditions. Pulmonary
Speaker 1: toberculosis and heart disease finished him. He died in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one at the age of forty nine. His
Speaker 1: family learned of the death through unofficial channels. His father,
Speaker 1: the former Air Force officer, reportedly suffered a heart attack
Speaker 1: shortly after receiving the notice. The Indian government never publicly
Speaker 1: acknowledged Kaushik as one of its own during his lifetime
Speaker 1: or even immediately after. There was no diplomatic campaign ever
Speaker 1: for his release, no state recognition. While he was alive,
Speaker 1: the family received modest monthly support than silence for them.
Speaker 1: The silence was the second betrayal. There are complications in
Speaker 1: the record, some details of exact rank, the precise value
Speaker 1: of the intelligency delivered in the full extent of his life,
Speaker 1: family life undercover very across accounts Indian reporting agree on
Speaker 1: the core timeline. Recruitment in the seventies, insertion in seventy five,
Speaker 1: exposure in eighty three, death in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Bollywood has circled the story ek the Taiga Romeo Akbar
Speaker 1: Walter without fully owning it. His family has claimed the
Speaker 1: films drew from his life filmmakers have denied it. The
Speaker 1: result is a strange half life. The story is known
Speaker 1: enough to be referenced, but not enough to be settled,
Speaker 1: but makes Kashik's case lingers the completeness of the erasure.
Speaker 1: Most spies retain some thread back to their real identity,
Speaker 1: some safe house, some periodic extraction plan. He lived as
Speaker 1: Nabir Shakir for years, built the family, wore the uniform,
Speaker 1: and still fed information home. When the cover collapsed, there
Speaker 1: was no extraction. There was only the long decline inside
Speaker 1: the prison. The letters he sent are the closest thing
Speaker 1: we have to his final voice. They don't ask for metals.
Speaker 1: They ask a harder question about the reciprocity between the
Speaker 1: individual who disappears for the state and the state that
Speaker 1: prefers the disappearance to remain complete. And that question is
Speaker 1: not unique to India or to the nineteen eighties. In
Speaker 1: that fact, Ravenda Kashik' story is clean in its outline
Speaker 1: and messy in its aftermath. A young man recruited for
Speaker 1: theater and nerve two years of training that rewrote him.
Speaker 1: Eight years inside the target military, sixteen years of imprisonment,
Speaker 1: death of a disease in a Pakistani jail, a title
Speaker 1: Black Tiger that floated for decades without an official owner.
Speaker 1: I think we'll leave it there tonight