The alleged arms drop is yet a mystery as the motive behind the event remains a mystery
It was a full moon day over the east coast of India on 17th December 1995. A transport aircraft flew amid the cloud cover and flew low than its usual altitude. The aircraft’s cargo bay opened. 20000 AK-47 guns and ammunitions fell from the sky. The drop also included rocket launchers and grenade bombs in the package. The flight made an uninterrupted trip to Bangkok. The arms drop was conspired by a Dutch and British national who never completed their jail term. The arms drop rocked the Indian political stage for decades to come and remain a mystery.
The plan:
The arms deal started with a Danish citizen Kim Davy who approached an ex-military serviceman Peter Bleach. Kim Davy convinced Peter Bleach to procure some arms on the pretext of a false company. They went to Latvia and arranged an Antonov An-26 aircraft for the drop and recruited a Lativian crew to man the flight. Weapons arrived at a deserted Lativian airport where the team camped. The plane was loaded with arms by the conspirators. MI 6, the intelligence unit from Britain, knew about the entire operation.
The flight plan was to fly to Karachi then to Bangkok via India. The flight took off from Latvia, took a break in Karachi, and prepared for the last leg of the journey. As the plane flew over Varanasi, the pilot changed direction and flew towards West Bengal. Once over the village of Purulia, the crew opened the aircraft’s cargo doors to drop the weapons. The plane then headed towards Bangkok.
Possible theories:
Villagers who found tranches of weapons informed the local police who captured the arms. The event came under the investigation of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The Antonov An-26 flew back through India, and a MIG-21 of the Indian Air Force intercepted it, and the aircraft was force landed in Mumbai. The Danish citizen Kim Davy vanished into thin air and reappeared in the Netherlands. The 5 Lativian citizens and the British Citizen Peter Bleach got arrested. The ensuing legal battle bought in various theories for a reason behind the arms drop.
- Peter argued that the arms drop was planned as an elaborate sketch of the Indian government to bring down the West Bengal state communist government. The weapons will instigate violence, which will help the Indian government to declare president rule and dissolve the state government.
- BBC investigated the event. BBC revealed that Kim was a devotee of the Ananda Marga, a radical cult that had its headquarters in West Bengal near the village of Purulia. BBC investigation indicated that Ananda Marg was in preparation to arm itself against India government in case of a standoff
- The arms dropped had the initials of the Rajendrapur cantonment of the Bangladesh army. There was speculation that the weapons were for the Bangladesh army. On that night, a person died in the Purulia village, and his body was on fire as per ritual. The Antonov crew thought it as the signal and dropped arms over he region
- Another theory states that the weapons were for the terrorist groups which operated in Burma/Myanmar.
Aftermath:
After years of investigation, the 5 Lativian citizens became Russian citizens and were released. The British citizen Peter Bleach got presidential pardon after pressure from Britain. India tried to extradite Kim and failed even until 2010. None of the conspirators of the arms drop served their sentence. Such a waste amount of weapons in a densely populated region would have caused havoc, but luckily it didn’t happen. The mystery behind the drop still hangs in the air, and Kim Davy alone knows the answer.
Source: The Night it Rained Guns: Unravelling the Purulia Arms Drop Conspiracy
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Original article: https://medium.com/history-in-bytes/when-it-rained-arms-in-india-purulia-arms-drop-411f677f259b
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