You Know That

After a few days I was accosted by a person, named Bashi Sahib, who was rumoured to be an agent of the British Secret Service. He told me that he had information that I could tell him the whereabouts of the two Indians hiding in my 'Muhalla', and the two Indians, he said, had recently escaped from India. When I expressed my inability to the British Secret Service agent he told me that nobody else could help him in that matter excepting myself. After discussion Bashi Sahib told me that one of the escapee was Subhas Chandra Bose, a topmost leader of India. I told him that I was a businessman and had nothing to do with politics or political leaders; but I should be obliged to him if he could help me to have Subhas Babu's 'darshan'. But in my heart of hearts I sensed danger and felt that something was brewing in the espionage cauldron of the British Government. I tried to analyse the situation. There were several alternatives. First, the German Foreign office might be the source of leakage of the secret. But in that case it would have been easy to spot me immediately and my doubts were set at rest when few days later Signora Karoni [Quaroni] came to see me. With her came a responsible member of the German Legation who had recently come to Kabul from Berlin. I complained to the German Officer that the British Secret Service agent Bashi Saheb told me what the British agent had learnt from the Afghan Ambassador at Berlin. The German Officer simply laughed and assured me that no leakage was possible from the German Legation. The only possible alternative seemed to be that the Peshawar C.l.D. must have looked for Rahmat Khan and not being able to trace him must have connected him with Bose Babu's escape to Kabul. But it was too late and the tiger had disappeared.

It may not be out of place to mention that after my arrest in May 1941 at Kabul whence I was sent to Jalalabad in fetters and then transferred to the Indian jail, Jiwan Lal was also arrested and thrown into prison. His only fault was that he used to meet me. What and how I suffered later on and how my property at Kabul was confiscated, is a story which throws a lurid light on the helplessness of India under foreign yoke. Independent India alone could have taken up my case.