Revealing the RAW & GEO Nexus 
By Makhdoom Babar
(With additional reporting from Anjali Sharma in New Delhi and Kapil Verma in Mumbai)

The ongoing episode in which Pakistan’s otherwise very popular and globally known media house the Jang/ Geo group stands completely incredible and has lost all its authenticity not only within Pakistan but also across the globe, the media house that had actually become a rogue media organization though, was this time very badly trapped, misused and rather gang-raped by Indians, specially by the Indian Intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), reveal the findings of The Daily Mail’s investigations into the matter.

The Daily Mail’s investigations indicate that Indians have always been very active in nurturing and trapping individual journalists as well the media organizations to run certain covert operations against Pakistan. Sometimes the journalists willingly offered their services in this direction and in other cases some journalists unknowingly and rather innocently served the purposes of RAW. These investigations further indicate that in late 1980s when India conducted highly objectionable military exercises known as Operation Brasstacks that sparked a serious crisis of confidence between India and Pakistan while Indian government came under a massive criticism from all over the world for disrupting peace in the region, RAW launched an Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar to divert the attention of the global power from Operation Brasstacks to Pakistan’s nuclear activities. Nayar, working on the directions of RAW, used a Pakistani journalist Mushahid Hussain Sayyed, then Editor of an Islamabad-based English language newspaper The Muslim for interviewing the then head of Pakistan’s nuclear programme Dr. AQ Khan in January 1987. Nayar’s interview with AQ Khan was organized by Mushahid Hussain and the interview later proved out to be very handsomely serving the purposes of the Indians. Though Mr. Mushahid was neither approached by RAW nor he had any intentions of serving any purpose of RAW or any other Indian entity, yet by organizing the said interview, he unknowingly played to the tunes of RAW and since then, things never stopped in this direction.

The Daily Mail’s investigations indicate that Jang Group was trapped by RAW long ago. However, after the launch of media house’s TV Channel, Geo TV, RAW’s interest in this Pakistani media house grew to new extent. Geo TV was launched just a year or so before RAW launched its hostile covert war in Balochistan. With the mushroom growth of TV Channels across Pakistan, many of which are still surviving merely on shady foreign funding, Geo TV could not attain the expected revenues or one can say that the lust for more and more revenue generation eventually landed Geo to a stage where it started looking forward to means of foreign funding through one project or the other, without disclosing it to the public or the government.

It appears in the beginning, Geo TV administration got closer to the Indians to get benefitted from the experience of the relatively established TV media in the regions but eventually the media house landed deep into the sinister plans of RAW. The picture in this direction started to get clear visibility when after the infamous 2008 Mumbai attacks of 26/11, Jang-Geo group took a globally unprecedented turn and instead of defending national interests and instead of confronting Indian government and Indian media’s anti-Pakistan propaganda campaigns, it toed the line of the Indians and tried its best to portray that Mumbai terror attacks were originated from Pakistan and indirectly pointed the finger towards Pakistan’s top security agency the ISI.

 

On 8th December, 2010, The Daily Mail published a report about Wikileaks relating to India. The report revealed the Wikileaks that were about the atrocities of the Indian Army in the occupied Kashmir, the role of Hindu extremist group and Indian Army in 26/11 attacks and also about RAW’s involvement in terrorism across Pakistan, specially, its expanded tentacles in Balochistan. The high profile report was based on the Wkileaks’ released secret US official cables while the Wikileaks later posted the same on its Website, confirming The Daily Mail’s report.

The Daily Mail’s report was reproduced by a local news agency the same day and because of the high voltage facts, this report of The Daily Mail was published by some professional journalists sitting on the desks of Daily Jang and Group’s English newspaper The News. In fact the report published by The Daily Mail both in its web and print editions, was published as the Lead story, 2 days later by both Jang and The News.

However, it appears that after receiving a very powerful orders from their Bosses and India, both Jang and The News as well as their TV arm the Geo TV, came very hard on The Daily Mail and tried to establish as if the said report was published by The Daily Mail on the behest of country’s military establishment. Without realizing that without giving the credit line to a contemporary and fellow newspaper that had published the same news a day 2 days earlier, they committed a fatal professional and ethical crime (http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=2695&Cat=13) and created a hype that if publishing a news report and that too based on international facts, against the Indian army and Indian intelligence was a crime for a Pakistani newspaper. 

 

To every body’s dismay across Pakistan, the Jang-Geo group blatantly started terming this news report of the Daily Mail, which they themselves also published later, as a fake and baseless report. It was for the first time ever that any Pakistani media outlet termed a report that narrated atrocities of Indian army in occupied Kashmir and Indian hand in terror in Pakistan, as baseless and rather started acting as mouthpiece of Indian government and started a campaign to defend the Indian army and Indian intelligence. The true face of these Indian pawns in Pakistan made was very clearly exposed when the Wikleaks themselves posted the same content on their official website. This was the stage when the media house was caught for the first time with their pants down with regard to being hands in gloves with Indian army and Indian intelligence. Yet they got away with it.

The links of the media house with Indian intelligence establishment did not remain much of a secret for long as in 2013, top Indian newspaper The Times of India came up with an Internet Investigation report about the appearance of an article on its Front Page. The release of this Internal Investigation Report by the management of Times of India is still termed as the grand script for �Geo Network’s Indian Misadventure with Hindustan Times, by the international media community.

The Daily Mail’s investigations further revealed that an article, that was published on Sunday, 29th September 2013, in the Times of India claimed that an underworld Don Dawood Ibrahim was the actual owner of the upcoming Pakistani media enterprise, BOL Network.

The Daily Mail’s investigations indicate that the said article was taken down within a few days after publication from Hindustan Times Website and a clarification was made regarding the authenticity of the claims made in the said article. It all happened when a high-level internal inquiry was ordered by the Chairperson’s office of Hindustan Times upon receiving a legal notice. The Chairperson and Editorial Director of Hindustan Times initiated an internal inquiry with the help of the Foreign editor of Hindustan Times, Pramit Pal Chaudhuri and their legal consultants Karanjawala & Co. regarding the source of this published news article and the internal source behind making this non-story a front page article. The HT enquiry team uncovered involvement of Pakistan’s Jang/Geo Media Group owner, Mir Shakeel ur Rahman, whose allegiance with an Indian intelligence official made it possible for a senior Hindustan Times Editor to get a source-less story on the front page of a nationwide newspaper as well as a headlining story on their Web Edition.

For this purpose, Mir Shakeel ur Rahman, using his contacts in Indian Intelligence(RAW), took a senior official of Hindustan Times, C.N. (Only Initials of the HT employee mentioned in the leaked report) into the fold and scheduled a meeting.

On Friday 27th September 2013, the scheduled meeting was held at Grand Hyatt Hotel, Mumbai at 8:30 PM (IST). The meeting was a hushed private affair booked under aliases to avoid trace, in a pure Hollywood Noir fashion. The said meeting was attended by the senior official of Hindustan Times (C.N.), the representative of Indian Intelligence (RAW) serving the liaison role and Mr. Jahangir Siddiqui, representing Jang/Geo Group. Mr. Jahangir Siddiqui’s visit to India was kept under wraps even from his own office staff although the source warrants his presence claiming that Mr. Siddiqui’s passport can be used as an evidence of his presence in Mumbai during the time meeting was held. Mir Shakeel ur Rahman, who was in London at that time, participated in the meeting through telephone.

The prepared article was given OK to be published as front-page news with absolutely no source quoted and no background check made, on the evening of 28th September 2013. Such a hasty action was only possible through the persuading power of C.N.

The news article was published in all editions of Sunday’s Hindustan Times nationwide on 29th September 2013. Catching up on the published story, few electronic media groups also broadcasted news reports regarding this story.

On 4th October 2013, the Chairperson of Hindustan Times was presented the outcome of internally conducted inspection regarding the faux pass committed by Hindustan Times. As per the inspection report, the involvement of C.N. being the lead conspirator of the news came into light, which brought him into circle of interrogation. Upon being assured job security as well as indemnification of any action, C.N. revealed that he forwarded the story for publication because of excessive pressure from intelligence (RAW), which was working in allegiance with the Pakistani Geo/Jang Media Group. Upon receiving this information, the Chairperson decided to take down the published news report from the Hindustan Times website.

Later, Hindustan Times communicated its official response through an update posted on the �Response� page of their official website; confirming that after initiating litigation against Hindustan Times for publishing the slanderous article, Hindustan times has removed the article �realizing the fallacy of the article and maintaining high journalistic ethics�. However, Jang-Geo Group could not come up with any reasonable response to this sinister episode, hatched by it.

The Daily Mail’s investigations indicate that in the latest episode, RAW decided to achieve multifaceted goals and they were even ready to sacrifice their own pawns, mercilessly. These investigations indicate that the Hamid Mir episode was a very well thought out conspiracy by RAW and even Geo group could not understand the invisible dimensions of this plan. It appears and as is evident from the account of incidents that Hamid Mir, known for very much liked by the Indian government and Establishment, after launching his made in India anti-Pak Army and anti ISI propaganda campaign, in a bid to get certain credence to his stature to come up as a very vital asset for his foreign bosses, sometimes back, made a few phone calls and e-mails to some friends and family members. As he knew, after the provision of the recording of his telephonic conversation with Taliban Commanders back in 2009-2010, to the media by some monitoring security agency, that his phone was being monitored and there was a third ear too, listening to his conversation, deliberately made such calls to friends, expressing threats to his life by ISI officials. 

 

He, lest forgot that in this age of technology, it was not merely the local spy agencies that were able to monitor calls made by cell phones while a few powerful foreign agencies were also able to exercise this practice through satellite, while sitting hundreds of miles away. His conversation, it appears, that he made to keep ISI on a defensive, were monitored by RAW or any of its allied spy agency or was straight away leaked by any of Mir’s confidantes to RAW. Here, seeing it very obvious that anything going wrong with Hamid Mir would implicate ISI very easily due to his expressed reservations in this regard, RAW formulated a multifaceted plan.

Under this plan, someone at Geo was convinced that in case of any eventuality occurring to Hamid Mir, it would be very easy to implicate the ISI, specially in the background of reservation made by Hamid Mir himself, claims made by different TV Channels say that Hamid Mir was not ready to go to Karachi on the fateful day due to safety reservation in the completely deteriorated security at Karachi where a high profile anti organized crimes operation was going on but was forced by some top officials of his organization to embark upon this journey. Poor Hamid Mir never knew that what actually was cooking up for him at Karachi and fell prey to this trap, unknowingly.

The investigations indicate that RAW had planned that if, as a result of an organized assault on Hamid, Geo manages to fix ISI, it would be a prime achievement, however, even if it fails to do so, the maximum damage would be done to the credibility and authenticity of top and the most quoted Pakistani media house that will eventually have far reaching impact on the rest of the Pakistani media house worldwide.

The Daily Mail’s investigations further reveal that RAW while, using certain media persons and media outlets in Pakistan was at the same time running a plan of discrediting Pakistani media amongst the global community as by achieving this, RAW would have a free ride with regards to its operations in Pakistan with no one taking Pakistani media seriously in this direction.

This invisible dimension of RAW’s multifaceted plan was however never smelled by any one at Jang- Geo group and it appears that rest of the Pakistani media is yet to get to this conclusion and thus are reacting just as how RAW expected them to react. The way the Pakistani electronic media has started challenging each other’s authenticity and credibility, it is also helping RAW a lot to enhance reproduce this state of affairs in Pakistani media across the world with �

 

RAW’s perception� to dent credibility and authenticity of overall mainstream media of Pakistan where the top most Media house already stands completely incredible and unauthentic. The situation is being used by RAW as always, to portray globally that any one that speaks or writes against India in Pakistan is actually aligned with Pakistan army or the ISI.

The Daily Mail’s investigations reveal that though it remains no mystery as to why the Indians have always been very generous in hurling cash awards and other heroic titles for certain Pakistani journalists while Hamid Mir and a few other employees of Jang-Geo Group are on record to have been selected for such awards by Indians very conveniently at many occasions, RAW is running other parallel project in this direction to trap more and more Pakistani journalists.

In a recent practice started in this regard by RAW with the connivance of Indian Television Academy (ITA), RAW has started trapping not only Pakistani but Middle Eastern journalists too in yet another unique manner. 

The Daily mail’s investigations indicate that a Pakistani journalist Sidra Iqbal received an award for her achievements in Journalism at the 4th Annual GR8! Women Awards 2014 held on 15th February at Sofitel The Palm in Dubai. Sidra was bestowed with the honor along with 16 other women from across the Middle East region who were recognized and celebrated at the event this year. Though her such high profile Achievements in journalism are not known in Pakistan yet she was placed at par with towering Indian journalists like Barkha Dutt etc while Ashish Bagga, Chief Executive Officer of India Today group, known for a variety of anti-Pakistan propaganda, presented the award to Sidra.Neither Indian Media nor Pakistani media has ever asked that why the Indian organization always reach out to Pakistani journalists to reward and award them for certain unknown achievements or for bravery and chivalry in journalism while thousands of Indian journalists are ignored for the same every year.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014