Who bombed the Hilton?

by Rachel Landers

  The report then goes on to list the two selfimmolations, the stabbing, the possession of explosives and the arrests. The analysis confidently asserts that the ‘events in February 1978 are reminiscent of those which occurred between August and November 1977, following the rejection of an appeal for Sarkar’s release in late July that year’.27

  It is apparent that the unnamed informant thinks the connection between the violence in 1977, after Sarkar’s first appeal is denied, and what is occurring now is obvious. In his or her view, the first wave was ‘probably perpetrated by a group of senior Ananda Marga leaders who were attempting to force the Indian Government to release their leader’. It thus follows that the ‘events involving senior Ananda Marga members, coupled with the failure of Sarkar’s [2 February appeal] indicates that a second series of violent attacks may have commenced’.28

  The circumstantial evidence does indeed appear to be compelling and it’s hard not to be overpowered by the desire to think, well, Abhiik Kumar (Alexander) was with all these Margiis who met with Sarkar in Patna jail, and Sarkar must have given the delegated sect leaders instructions on what to do if his second appeal failed. They wait in India until 2 February when the Indian Government denies the appeal. Next the Ananda Marga elite fly off to various destinations primed to bomb, stab or issue orders to other members to self-immolate. Many of them are apparently caught red-handed. How can all this be a coincidence? What were Kumar’s instructions when he returned home the day before the Hilton bombing? A peaceful protest? Plant a bomb in a bin?

  Problem is, compelling circumstantial scenarios are not a form of evidence that stands up in court. Until someone decides to confess or dob their spiritual comrades in, this intelligence is no better than gossip. It is equally possible that it is just scurrilous slander engendered by those forces (KGB, ASIO, CBI, CIA, Scotland Yard, etc.) intent on discrediting the sect. Even Sarkar weighs in from his jail cell, condemning these attacks and declaring that, in a fabulously convoluted argument, if these acts of violence do result in the Indian Government releasing him, he will not leave his cell in protest.

  The only way to operate in this environment of strongly suggestive circumstantial evidence and total denial from the suspects is to be patient — to wait them out and wear them down. The big problem is time. If this is a second wave of violence and if the pattern of the year before is anything to go by, then things have barely begun. The police from countries in Europe, Asia and North America sense this. The missives that shudder out of the telex machine from them are redolent with anxiety and fear.

  Adding to this rising level of concern is an urgent telex that arrives from Thailand:

  … information was received from Airline security on 18th March 1978, that suspected terrorist members of Ananda Marga plan to sabotage the Indian and Republic of Korea Embassy in Bangkok in order to force Indian government to release the Chief of Ananda Marga detained in India. It is believed that members of Ananda Marga will sabotage Thai government premises or hijack Thai aircraft to force Thai government to release Bangkok detained terrorist group. The information is believed to be very reliable.29

  The police in Australia immediately send patrols to airports to monitor Thai airlines and inform Qantas security.

  Then it gets worse.

  Another bomb

  On Thursday 23 March, just five and a half weeks after the Hilton fatalities, there are separate phone calls made first to North Sydney police station and then to the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) headquarters. The anonymous caller says there is another bomb primed to go off at 7.40 pm.1 It has been placed at the Indian High Commissioner’s residence in Canberra.

  There is a frantic search of the premises and nothing is found. However, unlike the hundreds of bomb threats received over the previous five and a half weeks, this one doesn’t disappoint. On Saturday morning, 25 March, about 30 hours after the anonymous call, one of the policemen stationed at the High Commission (police protection has been provided for all senior Indian officials in the lead-up to and aftermath of CHOGRM) spies a length of wire and what looks like a detonator at the base of a tree in the garden. The Canberra-based Commonwealth Police surge into the envoy’s home and evacuate the High Commissioner, Mr Jagdish Ajmani, and his family and the staff from the residence. They then fan out and begin to search the grounds. After searching for about half an hour they discover a canvas haversack under a hedge.

  The experts step in and extract it with a long hook then winch it up a line. Inside is a cut down carton ‘previously used to contain 24 tins spaghetti from San Remo Macaroni Co.’.2 The humble box holds a variety of batteries wired in series. The ‘terminals of the 703 batteries were taped together and wired to the 2372 battery’.3 Fifteen feet (4.5 metres) from the haversack, five sticks of gelignite are found, also taped together. All these are located a few metres from a cottage at the bottom of the garden. Inside the cottage are the housekeeper, his wife and their baby. After searching further the police realise that the High Commission backs onto a busy public park where Canberrans from the suburb of Red Hill like to walk their dogs. Anyone passing could have simply tossed the bomb over the back wall. The only good news is that while the alarm was wound up, the clock was not.4

  The newspapers, no doubt longing for some update on the case, immediately tie the find to the Hilton: ‘… it is believed that the bomb could be similar to the one which exploded outside Sydney’s Hilton Hotel last month, killing three people’.5 They also make vague allusions to the Ananda Marga being long suspected of targeting and threatening Indian nationals. The paper quotes the High Commissioner, Mr Ajmani, as having ‘no doubt who was responsible for the bomb. He said that the incident was typical of the terror some people were trying to use to force the Indian Government to release a certain person’.6 The Australian Margiis go on the offensive and issue a statement strongly denying ‘responsibility for, or any association with the planting of the bomb’. They go on to argue ‘that it seemed significant that the bomb had been discovered about a week before the sect’s leader was due before an Indian appeals court, seeking to reverse criminal convictions for which he was imprisoned more than six years ago’.7

  The following day Mr Ajmani gives up on the niceties and directly accuses the Ananda Marga of planting the bomb at his house and at the Hilton.8

  Behind the scenes the forensic analysis of the bomb itself is equally contradictory. The police have either diverted yet another tragedy or the device was never intended to explode. The Army ballistics unit, the Commonwealth Police and members of the task force carefully break down the bomb into its bibs and bobs. The clock, the gelignite, the detonators, the tape, the wires, the haversack, even the cardboard spaghetti box of ‘normal brown corrugated type’9 are described in comprehensive detail. All the components are easily accessible (Coles and Kmart stock most of the bits required) with the exception of some batteries of:

  … unusual shape and size. One of the detonators is very badly corroded and appears to have been inserted into one of the sticks of gelignite for some time. The other detonator appears new. None of the components bear the marks of fingerprints.

  What is clear is that whoever made it knew what they were doing.

  The device had been constructed in such a manner that it would have detonated had the circuit been completed, i.e. the hammer coming into contact with the bell dome. However due to some malfunction either when the bag was thrown into the grounds of the residence or the alarm lever having been left in the ‘OFF’ position, it failed to detonate.10

  As the task force frantically examine this new bomb, looking for similarities between it and the detritus from the Hilton blast, they are acutely aware of how swiftly the level of threats is rising. Compared to the first wave of violence in 1977, this second wave is scrappier, nastier and more ambitious. These acts seem much more likely to result in civilian deaths and casualties. The threats are also coming in faster and faster. The team gets one lead a day after the Canberra bomb discover
y. A young couple is reported being seen in the park behind the High Commission about half an hour before the bomb was found. The woman, described as slight, with shoulder-length brown hair, is said to have been carrying an army-style shoulder satchel similar to the one discovered in the grounds. Beyond that the descriptions are so general they could be anyone.11

  If I were Norm I’d be conscious of how stretched things are getting. In attempting to solve a single violent crime — the Hilton bombing — he and his team are becoming embroiled in dozens of others. While he can collate the targets by nationality (Indian) and agencies (government), besides those they seem to be capable of occurring literally anywhere. There are thousands of Indian nationals holding government positions in foreign countries and thousands of members of the Ananda Marga around the world — you can hardly follow them all. Even if suspicions seem to point to Abhiik Kumar being associated with the members of the sect arrested overseas, there is nothing to say he is carrying out similar attacks in Australia. Even if he is, he could simply issue orders to others — and if so, who are they?

  If things weren’t complex enough, two very strange things happen. Completely out of the blue, The Australian newspaper publishes an article declaring that it is possible that Mr Ajmani (or someone in his employ) planted the bomb with the express purpose of discrediting the Ananda Marga and disrupting Sarkar’s final appeal process.12 Although the Hilton task force has absolutely no evidence for this, the article claims a ‘police source’ stated that the Canberra-based Commonwealth Police (as distinct from the Sydneybased Hilton task force) and intelligence agents ‘first agreed’ it was definitely the work of the Ananda Marga. Now, however:

  … after exhaustive investigations and interviews … [they] believe the Ananda Marga was not responsible for that incident. Police sources stress that the sect’s reputation for violence is well founded but on this occasion there is no evidence to implicate it … Commonwealth authorities now believe it may have been the work of an Indian diplomat or intelligence agent working without the knowledge of the high commissioner.13

  While it is hard to pinpoint what exactly motivated a police source to make a statement of this nature, it is most probably connected to the fact that three days after the bomb was found in Canberra, an employee of the Indian High Commission, Suresh Kumar, was found hanged.14

  What does that mean? Was this chap guilty? Was he a secret agent for the Indian CBI? An Ananda Marga sympathiser? Or just a deeply unhappy man? Why would police, who have been so tight-lipped about their investigations up to this point, make such an assertion? Did Norm Sheather sanction it or did the Commonwealth Police (COMPOL) and ASIO just provide information to the press without consultation? Is this what they really think? Or is it disinformation intended to throw the Ananda Marga off the track? Is the federal government so fearful that they are seeking to defuse the situation by adopting a method of plausible deniability themselves?

  I can tell you one thing: the same way a canary must have a first woozy sway before toppling to earth and causing miners to gasp and flee, this event is a precursor to the imminent and catastrophic implosion of relations between ASIO, the Hilton task force and the New South Wales Special Branch, previously united in their pursuit of the Hilton bombers. It’s almost as if the Canberra bomb did explode, sending fragments of shrapnel into the investigation, which until now appeared to be going very well.

  Keep in mind it’s a little over two weeks since Norm got that beautiful intelligence tying those jetsetting senior Ananda Marga figures together and tracking them to India, then Bangkok, Manila and Australia. He must be feeling pretty good about how things are going. That it is possible that all the violence emanates from a tiny splinter cell within the larger organisation made up of elite long-termers way up the totem pole. Those with a direct line to Baba; those who go regularly to India, visiting him in jail, sitting at his feet in adoration and receiving his counsel. This is exactly what the original task force analysis stated in November 1977, and this is what recent intelligence fleshes out. But making this concrete is not easy. You certainly can’t panic or do something reactive.

  If a minority elite of the Margiis are playing a mind-bendingly sophisticated game, portraying the sect as oppressed, bullied and conspired against (and attracting huge numbers of new members in the process) while they are actually conducting a highly organised reign of terror in the name of the Universal Proutist Revolutionary Federation, it’s going to be almost impossible to compel these individuals to confess.

  Sheather has tried. In the days following the arrest of the Bangkok Three, he sends two task force members to Thailand to interview the suspects about their connections to the Australian Margiis and the Hilton. The task force offers them immunity, a free ride home and, who knows, perhaps some of that gigantic reward. Of course none of these inducements are going to fly — they are hardly going to appeal to earnest, highly disciplined young people willing to give up meat, money, careers, their entire families and, in some cases, their lives. By this stage five members have set themselves on fire in devotion to their cause.

  Perhaps the wisest thing to do would be to wait them out — keep the gaze on the horizon. With all this information pouring in from international police, all these similar cases, something’s got to give. Norm knows that ASIO has penetrated the sect — perhaps eventually these agents will crack the big time. What’s needed is a cool head and a calm mind.

  But fear and intense frustration are no allies of patience, and something fractures under the stress. That something is Special Branch.

  Shadowlands

  For reasons that can only truly be known by the detectives within this now-maligned group of police, whose actions now seem not only inexplicable but kind of insane, on 28 March 1978, six weeks after the Hilton bombing, Special Branch decide, without informing Norm Sheather or ASIO, to recruit and run their own secret agent inside the Margiis. An agent who will penetrate the sect and report exclusively to them. The person they select for the job is Richard Seary.1

  It seems so completely mad, doesn’t it? Why on earth would they recruit a man whose only contact with the Hilton team was to have wandered in off the street a few days after the bombing to point the finger at the Hare Krishnas? A claim that Sheather is completely unimpressed by. Why do detectives Krawczyk and Helson in particular, and to a lesser degree Watson,2 think that recruiting this slightly odd young man is a good idea? Why now? And why keep it secret from Sheather, the task force and ASIO?

  Here we enter shadowlands.

  There is no primary archival evidence about what went on between Special Branch officers Krawczyk, Helson and Watson and Richard Seary on 28 March 1978 between 4.15 pm and 6.45 pm, save that they met at Special Branch headquarters to discuss the possibility of Seary joining the Ananda Marga and attempting to gain inside information and then feed it back to the detectives. In short, to function in much the same way as the two ASIO agents who have been working within the sect since late 1977. This meeting is so clouded by competing recollections it is not even clear how Seary has come to be at Special Branch in the first place. Was he asked? Did he offer?

  Even some seven years later, during the extensive inquiry held under Section 475 of the Crimes Act into the convictions (based significantly on Seary’s evidence) of Timothy Edward Anderson, Paul Shawn Alister and Ross Anthony Dunn, the reasons remain opaque. During the course of that inquiry in 1984–85, all that sharp-eyed Commissioner James Wood can prise out of Krawczyk is that ‘by the time of the meeting he was aware of Seary’s earlier contact with the police, but he was unable to recall how it was that the meeting came about’.3 Likewise Detective Helson ‘could not recall the circumstances in which the meeting came about’.4Detective Watson is completely uninformative, stating that he ‘had not heard of Seary before the meeting’.5 As to Seary’s reasons for getting into bed with Special Branch — the Section 475 inquiry lists at least half a dozen contradictory motives. Seary confessed to friends, or in writing, th
at he was brought on board: one, because he had wasted police time with the Hare Krishna accusations and thus was bullied into infiltrating the Margiis; two, because they thought he was the Hilton bomber; three, because he understood Sanskrit (which he didn’t); four, because he was half crazy like the Margiis and could worm his way into the sect — and so on and so forth.6 Yet none of these explanations, or those to come, are backed up by evidence. Furthermore, all of this speculation comes in retrospect, and is tied irrevocably to the miscarriage of justice cases that are yet to occur.

  What if we go back to the day in question, forget what is to come and try to slip into their skins?

  28 March 1978

  It’s 43 days since the Hilton bombing.

  For the likes of Detective Norm Sheather and the Hilton task force, it can’t seem like much time at all for a major case, but this cannot be the feeling of Special Branch Detectives Krawczyk, Helson and Watson, who have doggedly been on the trail of the Ananda Marga for almost a year. They have been at the frontline of the attacks on and threats against Indian nationals since the previous winter and have put in mind- and bum-numbing hours of surveillance. They too have borne the brunt of the failure to protect CHOGRM and are under attack by elements of the press who hold them up to ridicule, or worse, accuse them of blackmail, conspiracy and murder. Then there was the bomb found at the Indian High Commission in Canberra. And what do they have on their prime suspects? Nothing. Nothing but the bland denials issued by the sect with smooth regularity. Circumstantially it all seems to point to an inner cell within the Ananda Marga, hidden deep within an oblivious rank and file membership. The fact is there is nothing concrete to hang onto despite the hours they have spent watching and listening.