Delhi family archive secret: A Punjab-Japan World War II mission

A Japanese visa issued in Bombay on April 4, 1939, by a consular official named Fukui Aki. An entry stamp at Nagasaki, dated May 22, 1939. A permit to remit Indian rupees through the Yokohama Shokin Bank’s Kobe branch, later replaced by the Bank of Tokyo in 1947.

These three fragments in an alias passport trace the extraordinary mission of Lala Gopal Das, a senior officer in British India’s Criminal Investigation Department. The passport was issued in the assumed identity of Sita Ram Anand, listed as a banker. Even his personal details were falsified: his real date of birth, June 8, 1887, was replaced with December 3, 1895, and his birthplace was mentioned as Delhi.

The forged identity charts a discreet journey from Colombo to Singapore, Hong Kong, and into Japan — just months before the Second World War erupted in Asia.

“It wasn’t a secret,” says distinguished Delhi-based photographer Jyoti Sikand, his granddaughter whose last major exhibition was at Delhi’s Habitat Centre in 2021. “He worked for the British, and by the time he died in 1965, everyone knew he’d been sent on a covert, James Bond-style mission to Japan.”

In his recently discovered private family papers revealed to The Tribune, Gopal Das described himself as the “second son of the late Hakim Narsingh Das” and noted that he was born in Lahore on “sambat Vasaka sudhi sukla paksh” — the traditional Hindu calendar date corresponding to June 8, 1887.

His family had long ties with the Lahore Durbar. His great great-grandfather, Hakim Maya Dass, and his great grandfather, Hakim Bishan Dass, were both court physicians to Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the “Lion of Punjab.”

He joined the Punjab Police as a constable in 1907, beginning a career that would span four decades and carry him from local policing into the world of covert intelligence.

His diligence and initiative were recognised early. In 1914, his supervisor Superintendent LCB Glascock recorded his appreciation when Gopal Das collected Rs 2,250 for the St John Ambulance Association in Punjab — a significant sum at the time.

In 1920, on his promotion to sub-inspector, the Punjab Government issued him a ‘Sanad’ (certificate of honour) for “valuable services rendered during the April 1919 disturbances”, a reference to the upheaval following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

That same year, in the 1920 New Year’s Honours, he was awarded the King’s Police Medal for “courageous conduct” in resisting a mob that attempted to invade the Lahore Civil Station.

The following year, in 1921, he received the Royal Victorian Medal for assisting with the India visit of the Duke of Connaught — Prince Arthur, Queen Victoria’s third son — whose tour of the subcontinent was a major imperial event.

From 1921 to 1924, Gopal Das served as Superintendent, CID, with the Punjab Police, a role that placed him at the heart of colonial intelligence operations. He was then transferred to Alwar, where the Maharaja recognised his abilities and facilitated a three-month training programme with Scotland Yard in London — a rare opportunity for an Indian officer at the time.

Early in 1927, he was seconded for three months to the Punjab Government’s Intelligence Bureau, where he gained direct experience in political surveillance and counter-subversion work.

Throughout his career, he also benefited from the trust of his British patrons, including three successive Inspectors-General of the Punjab Police — Glascock, Young, and Ewart — who repeatedly advanced his career and gave him access to responsibilities far beyond the reach of most Indian officers of the era.

In October 1938, he was appointed Deputy Superintendent, Delhi CID, a post that placed him at the centre of the capital’s intelligence machinery just months before his overseas mission.

Seven months later, in March 1939, he received a smallpox vaccination at the Punjab Vaccine Institute in Lahore — a precaution that suggests official preparation for foreign travel at a time when health certificates were required for entry into East Asia.

Shortly after, in April 1939, his alias passport was issued.

The “Sita Ram Anand” passport provides a clear chain of travel: visa issued in Bombay in April 1939, entry stamp at Nagasaki in May, and a financial transaction permit from the Kobe branch of Yokohama Shokin Bank. In pre-war Japan, such permits were essential for foreigners moving money — but they may also have provided a cover for intelligence-gathering on Japanese financial operations.

The trip lasted about a month. Official files — at least those available to the public — are silent about its purpose. But the timing is suggestive: by mid-1939, Britain was preparing for war in Europe, while Japan was already locked in its war with China. Tokyo’s ties with anti-colonial activists across Asia, including Indian nationalists, were a constant worry for the British.

That a CID officer would be assigned such a mission was hardly unusual. The Criminal Investigation Department was the colonial state’s intelligence arm, monitoring sedition, subversion, and insurgent networks across India and abroad.

Sending an experienced officer like Gopal Das to Japan — armed with a banker’s identity, a falsified birth certificate, and authority to remit Indian currency — fits the pattern of discreet intelligence missions aimed at mapping foreign contacts and monitoring hostile powers.

The 1939 mission also predates the fictional exploits of James Bond by more than a decade. “The difference is, my grandfather was real,” says Sikand. “No martinis or gadgets — just the discipline and discretion of a career policeman trusted with dangerous work.”

After retiring soon after Independence, Gopal Das saw his legacy carried forward in uniform. His elder son, Sandhurst-trained Major General Chand N Das, rose to senior command in the Indian Army, while his younger son, Lieutenant General Brijmohan N Das, also served with distinction. Major General Chand Das was also author of two books,‘ Traditions and Customs of the Indian Armed Forces’, ‘History of the Rajputana Rifles, 1947-1990 and ‘Hours of Glory.’

The family preserved his medals, Sanad, and alias passports — heirlooms that official histories have overlooked.

Eighty-five years later, the three stamps in that forged passport — the visa in Bombay, the Nagasaki entry, the Kobe bank permit — remain tangible clues to a forgotten mission that bridged the worlds of policing, intelligence, and diplomacy on the eve of global war. The rest of the story, locked in still-closed archives, has yet to emerge.