NEW DELHI: Some lives it seems are more precious than others and the Intelligence Bureau and the Home Ministry decide which should be protected against bullets and bombs even when the others are more likely to be hit.

On Friday when a bomb exploded under Mr Subodh Kant Sahay’s car the minister survived His bullet-proof car withstood the impact. Mr Sahay was well protected

Mr Sahay was placed in the highest risk category only recently after he announced his candidature from Ludhiana. But he has been availing of the protection offered by the four bullet-proof cars at his disposal ever since he took over as Minister of State for Home. Because ultimately the Home Ministry and the Intelligence Bureau decide who qualifies for protection often selectively.

Inquiries with the ministers the IB and the Delhi Police reveal that there are 60 Z-category persons staying in the city. This category implies the highest of high risks where an attack on a person’s life is perceived as not only certain but also imminent. The Home Ministry in its generosity has given bullet-proof cars to around 15 of them. The other 45 are on their own.

It is not as if there are not enough vehicles to protect the endangered. The Delhi Police monitors around 25 of them distributed among the 15 lucky allotted. But that is just a quarter of the total number operated by the IB and the ministry in the city. Sources said that the ministry guided by the IB maintained a fleet of 103 bullet-proof cars in Delhi. Apart from the handful monitored by the Delhi Police the remaining 80 cars were run solely on the discretion of the IB which is supposed to be an intelligence gathering unit and not a security agency. The Delhi Police did not know how these cars were deployed. It did not even know their number. even though security was primarily a police concern.

We are not consulted about these cars. All we know is that these cars are not given to the people we perceive as threatened. We don’t know how they are used and by whom said an officer. One thing was certain whoever ran the Home Ministry reserved a big chunk for themselves. Even when there were others equally threatened. Mr Buta Singh as Home Minister used to have six bullet-proof cars now reduced to two Mufti Mohd Sayeed had seven now similarly slashed. Mr Sahay maintained four even before he came into the militant’s firing line. On the other hand the person whose name figures on the top of the hit-list K.P.S.Gill has just one car at his disposal.

In fact of the 45 Z-list without this protection most were bureaucrats and police officers who had served in Punjab or Kashmir. They and their families were directly between the cross-bars of somebody’s guns.

We are giving them the best protection we can but we can’t give them BP’s (bullet-proof cars) until IB gives us the go-ahead said an official. He said that in any case a BP was not always a protection against explosives Mr Sahay had been lucky

Many people are willing to pay for such luck. A newspaper owner under threat had purchased his own bulletproof car when his Z-listing raised to impress the IB. But police officers and bureaucrats similarly threatened obviously could not afford the new Isuzu engine the special tires and the protective casing that went into a BP The police were struggling to cope with the increasing demands made on them Apart from the 60 people on the Z-list there were 250 people in the other three risk categories Y X and X2 in the decreasing order of threat who had to be protected. Many people were pulling strings to get themselves. listed endangered.

Some had practical reasons. A bureaucrat whose name was struck off the high-risk category moved heaven and earth to get it reinstated. He did not want to be transferred back to his parent cadre Punjab.

Others made it a prestige issue. One former minister for example had to be literally coerced into returning some of his fleet of bullet-proof cars.

Other cases were even more interesting. The IB decided that a former editor should be on the Z-list because he was under threat from a Chief Minister he had written against. The editor was not given a BP. He continued to travel I his own defence less car while his nemesis drove around on a bullet-proof car

And while 45 threatened and BP less people is watching the time-bomb tick on them one wonders what is the IB doing with its other 80 cars? Or would they rather not say?

Article extracted from this publication >> June 14, 1991