''Forgotten’ spy dies; district administration promises compensation

Ravi Dhaliwal

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Tribune News Service

Batala, August 12

Gurdaspur district administration has promised to recompense the family of a former spy after they refused to cremate his body on Friday.

Karamat Rahi (73) — who had earned the sobriquet ‘master spy’ for the way he would confuse his Pakistani counterparts — died in poverty at a hospital in Amritsar on Thursday evening.

His family refused to cremate his body until the state government paid him compensation and promised a job for his son. 

Gurdaspur Deputy Commissioner Pardeep Sabharwal constituted a two-member committee of ADC (general) JS Grewal and Batala SDM Saurabh Arora to negotiate with the angry family.

When they refused to budge, the district administration made them a written promise. 

A forgotten spy

A native of Khera Kalan village, Rahi lived in a poor belt of Gurdaspur district until Indian intelligence agencies spotted and recruited him to spy on Pakistan.

He crossed the border in 1986. Two years later, he was arrested for espionage and sentenced to 14 years in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail while his family struggled to make ends meet.

Karamat’s wife Surinder Kaur said that she would to get a monthly allowance of Rs 300 after her husband was arrested. “But that too stopped after ten months,” she said.

Rahi remained in prison until 2005, when Congress leader Captain Amarinder Singh, then chief minister of Punjab, had him released while he was on a goodwill tour to the country.

A neglected Karamat approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking pension and a job for his son, but court turned him down, instead imposing a fine on him for “wasting its time”.

When he appealed the order in the Supreme Court, he was asked for proof of his espionage activities.

“When the agencies recruit spies, they are sold dreams of getting prosperous. They promise money and security all of which are forgotten when a spy is arrested,” his son Ranjeet Singh said.