On the night of 17-18 December 1995, an aging Russian Antonov-26 plane
dropped three weapons-laden wooden pallets over Purulia, a backward,
nondescript district in West Bengal. Four days later, the same plane was
force-landed at Mumbai s Santa Cruz airport, from where the mastermind
of the operation, Kim Davy aka Niels Christian Nielsen, managed a daring
escape. Who were the end-users of the weapons? Why were they airdropped
over that particular region? Were they, as claimed later, meant for the
shady cult, the Ananda Marga? Was it an effort to topple the CPI
(M)-ruled state government of West Bengal? Or was it a conspiracy of
international proportions, spanning continents and masterminded by a
global superpower? As a reporter for The Telegraphand, later, the
Hindustan Times, Chandan Nandy broke several stories on this bizarre
covert operation. Nineteen years after the sensational arms drop, in
this book, he exposes the grave lapses committed by India s security
agencies and pieces together the story of how the operation was planned
and executed. He brings to light as-yet undisclosed evidence about the
end-users, whose identity still remains a mystery. Based on scores of
interviews with R&AW, IB and CBI insiders and relying on classified
documents, The Night it Rained Gunsis a riveting exploration of India s
greatest security breaches.
