Real-life story behind Indian spy novel revealed

Mission to Pakistan by Maloy Krishna Dhar

Book cover

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A few years ago, Maloy Krishna Dhar, a longtime veteran of India’s Central Intelligence Bureau (CIB), wrote Mission to Pakistan, a spy novel about the ongoing intelligence war between nuclear powers India and Pakistan. Since 2002, when the novel was published, Dhar has maintained that the exploits of his protagonist, an undercover Indian spy leading a double life inside the Pakistani armed forces, were based on the true story of an unnamed CIB agent who was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It now appears that the real-life story behind the book is that of Ravindra Kaushik, an accredited CIB agent who moved to Pakistan from Dubai, converted to Islam, married a Pakistani woman, and joined the country’s Army under the cover name “Nabi Ahmed”. Kaushik grew up in Sri Ganganagar, a town just a few miles from the Pakistani border in India’s state of Rajasthan. In the early 1970s, he was recruited by CIB and was stationed in Dubai. It was from there that he moved to Pakistan with a fake Pakistani passport and began his double life. But in 1983, Inayat Masiha, an Indian intelligence operative who was captured by Pakistani counterintelligence agents, blew Kaushik’s cover. The undercover spy was arrested soon afterwards, and jailed in the central Pakistani city of Multan. He reportedly died there in 2002, aged 50. His brother, Rajeshwar Kaushik, who spoke to India’s Hindustan Times, told the paper that three days before his death, Ravindra sent his relatives in India a bitter letter, complaining that “[h]ad I been an American, I would have been out of this jail in three days”.

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Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying, by Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis and Ian Allen.

8 Responses to Real-life story behind Indian spy novel revealed

  1. Mihiran says:

    well,not if caught in Russia or north korea or iran!!! same way,pakistan is for India.

  2. Anonymous says:

    True. Many unnamed heroes have died, but such are the compulsions of this vocation.

  3. rakesh gupta says:

    aise desh bhakt buddhiman jasus ko naman hai
    jo desh k liye kurbani de unho k liye, sarkar aur deshvasiyo ko, sahayata dene k liye taiyar rahna chahiye

  4. Anonymous says:

    ye tha tiger THE BLACK TIGER …………………… Salute Sir

    Jai Hind

  5. Anonymous says:

    Salute to the real hero!!!!!

  6. justme5461 says:

    I scanned all over the internet for many days and i can’t find a single reference about this guy “Inayat Masiha”. What happened to him? If he did blow Ravindra’s Cover – how come there was no torture by the pakistani army on him? He was also a raw agent or maybe an ISI agent? Most of the blogs I read about this incident have repeated (copy pasted) from other sources and given useless information (like silly bollywood movies) rather than give a detailed info. So question is – Was Inayat Masiha kept in Pakistani jail…or was he released….and if released why????

  7. Von Reinhard says:

    err…..allow me to say that it is vice versa as well…galore that is!

    The story is nothing special in the least…its a routine duty for intel operatives. I am sure many of the Pakistani side performing similar duties must have breathed their last in nagpur and delhi too!

  8. Ankur Agarwal says:

    where is Inayat Masiha who exposed Ravinder Kaushik and what about Ravinder’s son and wife in Pakistan?

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