How my father saved George Fernandes from being killed

On June 3, trade union members all over the country commemorated the 89th birth anniversary of former defence minister George Fernandes, who had passed away in January 2019.

However, apart from Vice President, M Venkaiah Naidu, who paid homage to George Fernandes in a series of tweets, no other public figure or politician remembered the man whom they were praising effusively when he passed away in January.

But Twitter was inundated with thousands of grateful tweets from the families of railway workers, taxi drivers, sex workers, mill labourers, political asylum seekers, and Burmese and Tibetan refugees, commemorating the man who worked tirelessly for them for decades.

During his lifetime, even those who opposed his politics, had admired his physical and moral courage, his wide intellect, and championing of numerous social causes.

Ever since he led the violent nationwide strike by railwaymen in May 1974, Indira Gandhi thought that George Fernandes would assassinate her, most probably in a bomb explosion in Varanasi. Indira Gandhi's idée fixe got cemented when her money bags man, Lalit Narayan Mishra, was killed in a bomb explosion in a train in January 1975. Indira Gandhi kept remarking to her aides that George Fernandes would soon kill her while she was on one of her frequent train journeys.

On the night of June 25-26 1975, as leading politicians were being arrested, a telephone operator, who overheard some telephone conversations about the arrests, tipped off George Fernandes, who was holidaying with his wife Leila Kabir and infant son in Gopalpur on Sea in Odisha.

Chandrashekhar was arrested from Rivoli theatre in Connaught Place, where he was watching a late night movie with BP Koirala. The sympathetic police officer took Chandrashekhar to a nearby phone booth, and told him: "I am delaying recording your time of arrest by half an hour in the case diary. During these thirty minutes, phone whomever you want to about the arrests."

Chandrashekhar's conversations were overheard by a telephone operator who was in the trade union, and she phoned George Fernandes. Clad in just his lungi, George Fernandes managed to escape seconds before the police arrived to arrest him. Masquerading as a fisherman, George Fernandes travelled to Gujarat and Tamil Nadu and Kerala, organising resistance to the Emergency.

In order to capture George Fernandes, Indira Gandhi's government arrested his brothers Lawrence and Michael, as well as his associate, the noted film actress Snehalata Reddy. They were brutally tortured in Bengaluru Jail.

George Fernandes grew a beard, and disguised himself as a Sikh, taking the alias Khushwant Singh, the first Sikh name he could think of. After travelling through several states, organising resistance against the Emergency, George Fernandes sought refuge in Saint Paul's Cathedral in Kolkata. A senior police officer in Kolkata became suspicious of this bearded Sikh working as an odd jobs man in St Paul's Cathedral.

Pretending to be a parishioner, this senior police officer patiently built up a friendship with the bearded Sikh, Khushwant Singh. He casually engaged him in conversation, and after a while, broke into colloquial Marathi. An unthinking George Fernandes spontaneously replied in colloquial Marathi, and the officer said: "We got you, George."

The Palace Guard had issued verbal orders that George Fernandes should be killed as soon as he was captured. But this police officer insisted on getting written orders. This police officer's encrypted "For Your Eyes Only" cable to Indira Gandhi was decrypted by her trusted aide NK Seshan.

An aghast NK Seshan immediately consulted my father, HY Sharada Prasad (Information Advisor to prime minister Indira Gandhi). My father dropped a heavy hint to two trusted journalists, VK Madhavan Kutty and GK Reddy: "I hope the international media does not report the capture of George Fernandes because it would be embarrassing to the Palace Guard".

These two savvy journalists immediately understood the implications of what NK Seshan and my father were hinting at. Although they could not use this exclusive scoop because of press censorship, VK Madhavan Kutty and GK Reddy immediately tipped off the BBC, which put out a breaking news story, and also ensured that Britain's MI5/MI6 got to know.

An international hue and cry ensued, and so George Fernandes escaped being killed in police custody. Photographs of George Fernandes being led in chains and handcuffs hit the front pages of newspapers the next day.

Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, Michael Foot, and numerous international statesmen put heavy pressure on Indira Gandhi to release George Fernandes. But she snubbed them all. Michael Foot, who considered himself an elder brother to Indira Gandhi, flew to India in October 1976, and spent several days trying to persuade her to release George Fernandes. But Indira Gandhi firmly told Michael Foot that George Fernandes would have to stand trial on criminal charges of masterminding mass violence.

A very young Sushma Swaraj was the only lawyer who had the courage to defend George Fernandes, who was jailed in brutal conditions for the remainder of the Emergency.

Even though she was under constant surveillance, George's wife Leila Kabir managed a daring escape to USA, together with her infant son, where she got in touch with humans rights groups.

Snehalata Reddy did not survive her imprisonment, and George's brothers, Lawrence and Michael were broken by their brutal torture.

Even though he was in jail throughout, and unable to campaign, George Fernandes won the March 1977 elections from Muzaffarpur with a massive majority, without ever having set foot in the constituency. Prime minister Morarji Desai did not want to include George Fernandes in his cabinet, stating that he could not condone a man who advocated violence on a mass scale.

But Morarji Desai was compelled to include George Fernandes in his cabinet, and, as Industries minister, George Fernandes expelled IBM and Coca Cola from India on allegations of violating foreign exchange regulations.

The two most abiding photographs of George Fernandes which caught the world's imagination are, first, of his raising his handcuffs and chains in defiance as he was jailed during the Emergency, and the second by the famous British photographer, Lord Snowdon, of an exhausted George Fernandes, tired after a long day of election campaigning, sleeping amidst a pile of books and papers, together with his beloved golden retriever dogs.


The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.