Original subtitles

I was working undercover for the British government.

We're going to move quickly before they realise it was us.

This is now so dangerous just to be almost suicidal.

Go! Go!

Go!

If he starts anything, I'd have to shoot him.

Take them away!

To all of us!

British! Take them away!

Take them away! Rocket launchers, hand grenades, sniper rifles.

My mission wouldn't be a success unless it was stopped.

They didn't want the truth to come out.

Somebody wanted me dead.

I come from a military family.

Almost every male relative I have has seen action in warfare.

So the army is in my blood.

I was in the military two and a half, three years, and I enjoyed it

But it wasn't what I personally wanted to do.

So I was still a very young man when I left the British Army, and I was, you

know, well -trained, well -qualified.

I had an encyclopedic knowledge of arms and ammunition.

And I decided to go into the defence trading business.

People immediately think of tanks and rockets.

You have to remember that armies require a huge variety of things just to

function on a day -to -day basis.

You've got a, you know, 50 ,000 soldiers.

You need a lot of laboratory paper.

Somebody's got to supply it. That's defence trading.

It's the same as supplying artillery shells, and that's where the trade lies.

So you scan government gazettes, you see the tenders, you see what people are

wanting to buy, and you spot something that you can supply, and you put in a

tender for that. And that's what arms trading is all about.

I lived with my girlfriend, Jo.

She was a Fleet Street journalist.

I had a nice old farmhouse on the Yorkshire Moors with ten acres of land

it.

Yes, it was living the dream.

And we were very, very happy indeed.

By August 1995, I've been trading in arms for about five years.

Out of the blue, I got a request from a Danish businessman asking me to quote

from the supply of 1 ,300 AK -47s.

The bread and butter of most arms dealers is... selling batches of AK -47

rifles. It's still the best selling rifle in the world today because it

and it's dirt cheap, but it's good.

The delivery address for this particular consignment of arms was Calcutta Port

in India.

Perfectly normal.

I quoted somewhere in the region of $350 ,000 US for the guns and delivery.

I got a fax back saying they were very happy with the price and would I fly to

Copenhagen to sign the contract?

About a week later, I flew off to meet them.

Peter. Hello. Welcome.

Thank you.

You've brought the document?

Yes, of course.

I opened my briefcase and produced the copies of the contract.

Sounds good.

I had no reason to suspect anything.

Until another guy came in.

Ah. Good to meet you, Peter. Good afternoon.

He said his name was Kim Davey. Sorry I should have come in earlier.

The guy who was in charge... There has been a change of plan.

Let me explain.

He wanted to reduce the number of AK -47s he was buying, but add in some

things like rocket launchers, hand grenades, pistols, sniper rifles.

There's only one explanation.

You don't want... That amount of guns, if you're a legitimate person, you're a

terrorist if you want that.

And then he said... I want them dropped with parachute out of the back of a

cargo plane.

The moment this guy said that to me, I was left in no doubt whatsoever.

I knew we were talking about an illegal deal.

I was absolutely shock rigid because all legitimate arms trading is done from

custom sport to custom sport.

So I instantly changed gear and it was an entirely different ballgame from that

second onwards.

I wasn't going to take them all to high ground and say, look, I'm not dealing

with terrorists.

But I had to get out of there. I had to get away.

The way I played it was to pretend that I was annoyed with them.

I would have preferred it if you'd told me all this before I left.

I mean, this is completely unexpected.

The guns of a group of monks were being persecuted by the communist government

of West Bengal.

I know them well.

It's tragic.

Some of them have been set on fire in the streets of Calcutta and burned

I mean, every terrorist thinks that their cause is righteous.

It doesn't mean they're not a terrorist.

I thought the best thing to do is say, yeah, I'm happy to give you a quote for

this, but it's going to cost you more money.

Fine, Peter.

When I came back to England, the very first thing I did was get hold of the

at the Defence Export Services Organisation.

That was a part of the Department of the Ministry of Defence set up to assist

people in the defence trade.

And so, if anything hooky comes up, and this clearly was, you phone them

straight away.

Let's speak to David Hemmings, please.

Went through every detail of the meeting.

and I was told categorically to continue dealing as normal with these people.

They were to carry on thinking that I was on their side.

Now I was effectively working undercover for the British government.

My motivation in going ahead with this was, you've got to do the right thing.

You can't just ignore things like that, because that makes you just as bad as he

is.

So we agreed to that.

I stayed in touch with Kim in the days and weeks that followed.

Kim, hello.

How can I help? Kim Davey had just asked me to buy him an aircraft as well. I

found an Antonov cargo plane for him.

Kim was to go ahead and get a Russian flight crew, and the weapons would be

supplied by a state -owned armaments firm in Bulgaria.

Have a good evening. Bye now.

I was very keen to deliver Kim into the hands of law and order.

It was all sorted out.

In December 1995, I had a meeting at my house to discuss how to

arrest Kim Davey.

Good morning. Good morning, Mr Bleach. I'm Detective Sergeant Stephen Elcock,

North Yorkshire Special Branch.

North Yorkshire Police Special Branch are a covert unit. Thank you. And they

generally support MI5 in their activities.

MI5 is a domestic security service within Britain.

So? They said they'd consulted with the Indian government that it is vital that

the delivery of illegal arms and ammunition is brought to India simply so

the Indian government could arrest everybody concerned, seize the guns and

the people on the ground.

Right, well, I'll give you the plane registration so

you can follow the flight plan.

Look.

flying from Bulgaria from here, Benaria, otherwise known as

Varanasi, stopping there before the drop.

That was the moment that we hatched a plan.

The aircraft would stop to refuel at Varanasi.

At that moment, the Indian security forces would surround the plane and

Kim Davey.

The aircraft would be full of arms and ammunition.

He would have been caught red -handed on Indian soil by Indian security

services.

It would have been a clean, quick operation.

There was an extraordinary coincidence.

The phone rang, and it was Kim.

Hello, Peter, how are you? How the devil are you? I put the conversation on the

loudspeaker. I need you to come out here for me.

To Bulgaria.

We're stuck here until I get a new certificate of airworthiness.

Because I was the agent who'd sold the aircraft, He needed me to sort out the

paperwork so that the aircraft could leave the ground.

There you go.

Stuck in Bulgaria.

Well, you have to go.

That flight has to take off.

You have to go to Bulgaria and sort this out, otherwise we're going to lose the

whole operation.

Thank you, Peter.

I could have turned around and said, no, I'm not having anything to do with it,

and that would have wrecked everything that everybody had worked for for

months. Joe?

There simply wasn't any choice.

Sorry, love.

I was assuming that I'd be back from Bulgaria in a matter of days.

And actually, it gave me comfort to know that the security services knew what I

was doing and where I was.

Won't be long.

Days.

Sorry, love.

When I got to the aircraft, the weapons were in the plain boxes and they were

provided with paperwork that said technical equipment.

So it was an innocuous -looking cargo.

Kim was there waiting for me.

Well done, Kim.

I had a fresh certificate of airworthiness that was valid.

Excellent. Thank you, Peter.

It's a huge help. I thought, that's that, the job's done, and I can go home.

He said to me that he was sorry, but since I was the only person who knew all

the details of the consignment and the operation, he wasn't comfortable with

letting me just go my own way.

You're the only other person who knows about the mission.

I need you to come with me.

What if somebody questions you when you get home?

He wasn't asking, he was telling.

Kim, you can trust me. I promise.

I thought that if I flatly refused to go, I may well be in quite serious

So I calculated that there was by far the least risk of to agree.

You're a very persuasive man.

I knew I could count on you, Peter.

It was absolutely critical that this mission, as it was planned, was to go

ahead. I assumed that Indian security services would arrest him at Varanasi.

That assumption was one of my biggest mistakes.

I was on an elderly Russian cargo plane carrying a load of weapons all destined

for an illegal arms drop in the backwoods of India.

I was quite worried. But all the time was this memory of British intelligence

saying it's absolutely vital that this consignment arrive.

That was the premier thing in my mind.

And my mission is to deliver Kim into the hands of law and order in India.

To make a parachute drop, you have to open the boxes and tack the arms and

ammunition onto the pallet.

By the time we finished, there were three big pallets strapped down, full of

arms and ammunition, ready to go.

And after a very, very long flight, finally one of the crew came back and

we're coming into land to refuel at Varanasi.

I'm convinced that within half an hour or so, everybody's going to be in police

custody.

And the tension just started to build up, you know, the adrenaline kicks in

again.

Touchdown.

I'm actually looking for signs of where the Indian Special Forces attack was

likely to come from.

I grabbed a pistol.

Just so I had a gun if I needed it.

And I suppose old habits die hard.

If Kim picks up the loaded AK and looks if he's going to use it, I would have

shot him without question, without hesitation.

I thought that the Indian security services would follow the fuel bowser,

because they'll be able to get 20, 30, 50 blokes right up to the aircraft.

I was absolutely ready to take him out.

It came under the wing.

And I could see there was nobody behind us. And I was absolutely astonished. I

thought, what the hell's going on here?

It was the biggest anticlimax I've ever experienced in my life.

Right to the last minute, I thought, no, somebody's going to rush the plane any

minute now. Something's going to happen.

But nothing happened again.

I should have got a flight back direct to the UK.

But I was on a mission.

The objective is to...

get the group identified and rolled up and arrested.

And for better or for worse, it's vital that that takes place.

The monks need their weapons.

They need our help.

What's happening to them isn't right.

As soon as they're done, we go.

I came to the conclusion that I was going to ride with this aircraft to its

destination.

Fueling was finished.

Pilot fires up the plane.

And we're up into the night sky.

And then I thought, I hope to God that the Indian Special Forces haven't

to just shoot the aircraft down.

I wonder if the missile's going to hit us. I wonder if the missile's going to

hit us.

It would work. It would stop the arms from being delivered.

The plane would simply disappear.

That would be the end of it.

I was desperately worried.

The second thing in my mind was the fact that we had to fly between two hills to

hit the target.

And the drop zone was a single hill that would appear to be in front, rather

like a rifle sight.

And when we passed the waypoint... There it is!

We have to go!

It was gone, and that was it. They were out. We safely executed the drop.

The missile didn't hit them. I was happy to be alive.

Everybody else thinks this is a great success, but I'm the only person whose

mind's in turmoil who knew that this was a catastrophic mistake.

This aircraft should have been arrested at Varanasi, and something's gone

really, really wrong.

We flew on to Thailand and Kim checked us all into a hotel complex.

I thought the first thing I'm going to do is contact the British authorities

tell them everything.

But we had to go through the hotel exchange and I thought that was very

Kim Davey. Anybody else could listen to the phone calls of whoever I spoke to.

So I basically collapsed and went to bed.

The next morning, I put on the World Service News.

Villagers in the Purulia district of West Bengal woke up this morning

to find weapons lying on the ground, apparently dropped from the skies.

I suddenly thought to myself, my God, that's us.

I'm confused because, you see, these are villagers on the television screen, and

we were miles from any villagers.

I was at the same time quite relieved because not all the guns had arrived.

with this group of insurgents, whoever they might be.

They were in the hands of the police. So that was a plus point.

You've seen the news. Got it on now.

This is now big trouble.

What the hell are we going to do now?

They do not know why the weapons were dropped or who the intended recipients

have been.

What an extraordinary mistake to make. I mean, how did this happen?

And it becomes obvious there's any one way this can happen.

And that's because we were flying too high.

And the parachutes blew off course.

Kim's first thought is damage limitation.

We've got to move quickly before they realise it was us.

He's all for repainting the aircraft, abandoning it at some little airport

somewhere. Meanwhile, in my head, I'm thinking it was absolutely vital that I

somehow got that aircraft back to India and gave the Indian government a second

chance to arrest Devi and his associates.

I was absolutely determined I wasn't going to give up on this. We have to

to the plan.

The only way the Indian authorities will suspect us is if we panic and do

something unexpected.

If we don't go back on the flight plan that we have booked, we will draw

attention to ourselves.

OK.

Let me know when you're ready.

And he agreed that that was a good idea.

So we drove over to the airport, get on board the plane, and off we go.

By this time, I had no way of knowing if the British government was tracking my

movements or not.

After several hours of flying, we entered Indian airspace.

We were about 15 minutes out of Bombay.

Air traffic control

told us to land for technical reasons and that was the expression they used.

We couldn't understand what they would be because we were in possession of a

fully authorized flight plan.

They're telling us to land.

Peter, that's not good.

It's an instruction, Kim.

It's all a request.

We have to land.

Land.

Tim Davey got really busy formatting his laptop computer, breaking

up floppy disks, every piece of significant evidence.

I don't know what to think.

We landed.

I was really excited.

I want this plane arrested.

I want to put this lot to bed.

I thought I'd done the job.

I thought that the Indian security services would arrest David.

But nobody came to see us.

Nothing happened.

I thought, what the hell's going on here?

She's sorting out the landing fee.

Back in 10 Peter.

A few minutes after that,

I see lorries, look like military lorries coming our way.

I thought I could see it.

Afternoon. Please give me your manager's passport.

Where is Kimpy Davies?

Time of landing for you. Very pleased.

Come in, come in.

Kimpy Davies is there.

Okay. Bye.

Please take him away.

I started then to wonder a little bit what was going on here.

And we were put into the most filthy cell imaginable.

Where's Tim Davies? I don't know. It was quite a long time before I realised

that Tim Davies had actually vanished.

Have you spoken with British Secret Services?

I was on a mission to help you.

Arrest Kim Davies.

I assumed that the Indian security services would know who I was and they'd

me go.

But then the questioning started in earnest.

Go tell me the truth.

Sometimes it would be CID, sometimes it would be the state police, sometimes it

would be the city police.

If you help me, I'll help you.

And I couldn't understand what the British government was doing and my

should have been confirmed by then.

You are a liar.

Why are you still lying?

To all British secret services, am I fine?

And the next thing I knew... What the hell is this?

What the hell are you doing?

I was taken right to the perimeter of the airfield.

Where are you taking me?

I was sort of held in a crucifixion position.

I heard them cock their rifles and take aim.

This is it. This is where it all comes to an end.

And we stood there, it seemed like an aid.

And then suddenly I heard, I

don't know what happened there. I

don't know if it was an attempt to intimidate me.

It was a horrible experience.

Absolutely awful.

I don't fully understand it to this day.

They ended up transporting us to Calcutta to a police station in the

It was dark. It stank of human waste. Clearly hadn't been cleaned for years.

I did wonder what on earth the British government was up to because I was

relying on them to get me out of here.

And we were just left there.

That concerned me greatly.

A few days later, we were taken from our cell.

We had no idea where we were going.

And we got to this building in the town centre.

And it turned out to be the magistrate's court.

There were thousands of journalists and television cameras, BBC News 24, CNN.

They were saying, do you have a statement? Do you have a statement?

I realized then that this is clearly a huge international story.

And we were taken into a courtroom and put into a steel cage.

A little bit like being in a zoo, actually.

And then everybody stopped to listen to the magistrates.

Peter Bleach?

Yes? We all confirmed our names.

You are hereby charged with waging war against India.

Waging war against India.

Probably one of the most serious crimes in the Indian law.

I thought, how is this possible?

I'm being charged with something that carries a death penalty when all I ever

did was try and get...

The conspirators were arrested.

There's been a big mistake.

Take them away.

I thought I'd been shafted good and proper.

I really did. Somebody here has screwed me over. I didn't know who it was.

It might have been the Brits, might have been the Indians, but somebody

somewhere.

had set me up as a real patsy on this one.

We were escorted through to the high security ward.

We didn't even know if anybody knew

where we were.

We were completely isolated.

The first couple of nights were very, very difficult indeed.

We got very little food and we were hungry all the time.

The lights failed and within seconds you could hear the cockroaches scuttling

about the place.

No awful things. You know when they're crawling over you, it's not a nice

feeling at all.

We were kept locked in our cells most of the time.

We don't speak the language.

They were very hostile to me indeed.

The problem that we had was we were accused of crimes against India.

That's the kiss of death in an Indian jail.

I couldn't figure out how I was going to survive this.

Usually, I had a plan.

But this time, there was no plan at all. I had no idea how I was going to get

out of this.

I'd been in jail for weeks and weeks and weeks now.

By then, I'd completely lost track of days.

I had no idea what the date was. We had no idea what was happening in the

outside world.

It was an awful thing.

But then one day, one of the jail officers came to me and said, Mr. Peter,

there's a visitor for you.

He's a British diplomat.

And I thought, this is absolutely marvellous. This is really what I've

waiting for.

Mr. Leach?

Yes? Peter Leach. Yes.

My name's Hugh Grigg. I'm from the British High Commission.

Hello.

Why, it's good to see you.

Well, look, there's been some awful mistake here.

And I don't think I've ever been so relieved to see anybody in all my life.

And I thought, fantastic, I've got a set foot out of the jail.

Is there anything I can do to be of assistance?

What do you know about the case?

Oh, not a whole lot. I was hoping you'd be able to fill me in.

What?

Wow!

It was an extraordinary hammer blow that... The Foreign Office knew nothing

about this whatsoever.

I was annoyed, because I wanted to go home by then.

But, you know, I wasn't, and that was that. So there was no point crying over

spilt milk. The situation was what it was, and I had to make the best of the

situation.

So from that moment, I made a conscious decision to defend myself, because I

knew nobody could do it better than I could myself.

After two months, I got copies of the evidence against me, including a

that belonged to Detective Sergeant Elcock.

Mr Bleach? He was the special branch officer that came to my office with the

guy. I'm reading this statement, and I can't believe what I'm looking at.

He said that he came to see me investigating my criminal activities,

was an outright lie.

And I found copies of his police notebook.

There's just a blank space at the top.

I thought there's an entire introductory paragraph missing from this whole

thing.

No. So he's completely distorted the evidence against me.

Absolute bastard to do something like that, and I make no apologies for the

language whatsoever.

This is a policeman doing it. I don't care that he was special branch and

they're a bit special.

As a British policeman did that, he lied.

I needed to know why this was.

What was happening? What was behind it?

Because I could now be facing the death penalty.

It was obvious to me somebody wanted me dead.

And that meant I had to watch my back all the time.

There were a lot of people, little drug dealers and pimps and all sorts of

people who wanted to have a go at us.

Without the military training, I couldn't have survived my time in jail.

We ended up having to fight quite a lot.

It was difficult, but you have to stay determined that you're not going to let

it get you down.

I had to keep my wits about me, and the best way of doing that turned out to be

writing petitions, writing letters.

and I got these copies of the Indian law book because I was trying to save my

life.

The British diplomat gave me the factors to show my girlfriend very reassuring

factors that they're trying to find out what's going on because she did know my

side of the story.

I was confident that I finally got things moving.

I've now been in jail for two and a half, three years, and I'm about to go

trial, and suddenly I got a call to the office of the jail.

The guard said, I've got a parcel for you from North Yorkshire Police, Peter.

Opened it up and started to go through it, and I noticed straight away that it

was all the original documents, including the Belcock Police notebook.

So suddenly, I didn't just have the mess of his documents that he'd submitted to

the Indian court. I had the original document that showed what paragraph was

missing.

There were documents that proved, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the very

first thing I did when I found it was an illegal deal was to contact the British

authorities and tell them everything.

I thought this was almost to get out a jail -free card.

I had this guy absolutely banged to rights.

So I was buoyant. I was fully confident I could go to court and prove beyond a

shadow of a doubt that I wasn't guilty.

I was going to court in a really, really good mood. I was ready for it.

Finally, I was going to be able to fight back.

Because I was defending myself, I sat at the desk with the lawyer.

But the real thing that I was looking forward to was the appearance of

Sergeant Stephen Alcott.

Because, of course, I had all sorts of rock -solid evidence against him to

my innocence.

When it was my witness, I thought, I've got to make the biggest possible impact.

He had no idea that I had this unaltered original notebook.

And I looked straight at him and I smiled at him and said, now, Sergeant

will you kindly look at the document that's just been presented to you?

And his face turned absolutely grey.

I thought he was going to have a heart attack.

Line by line, we went through every change he made.

Then I said, so, Sergeant Alcock, it...

Is it true that you submitted a completely false document to the court?

Yes.

Thank you.

It was absolutely marvellous. I was on a complete high.

I'm thinking I'm going to be on a flight to London soon.

So we were quite confident when the magistrate came to announce the verdict.

We're called to stand in the dock.

And the magistrate said, The verdict of this court, guilty on all charges.

None of us said anything. It was a very big

shock indeed.

Your brain spins.

You cannot understand where it's coming from.

The sentence is life imprisonment.

Life sentence in that place was nearly as bad as a death sentence. In fact, it

was like a death sentence that was prolonged over a period of years. Take

away!

Someone somewhere didn't want the truth to come out, and I was paying the

ultimate price for that.

I had to face the fact that I had life imprisonment.

And that was that. I didn't look too optimistic at that particular stage.

I thought, I'll write this letter to my partner, Joe Fletcher.

I said, you've got to stop thinking about me.

I'm stuck here now. It looks like I've got life imprisonment. I can't guarantee

I'm ever going to get out.

So, you know, best thing to do is for you to make your own life.

Things like that are difficult to write.

Because there comes a time when you've got to get rid of the false optimism.

Face the fact that you might lose this fight.

I think that was probably the lowest moment psychologically.

I was pretty close to giving up the struggle at one point.

Because I didn't think I could go on.

Incredibly, after a few months, the jail superintendent and his deputy came down

to the cells... You!

You! You! Going home.

..and said to the Russian crew, pack your bags, you're going.

They were overwhelmed.

And that was it. They were gone.

That's the last I ever saw of the Russian crew. One minute they were

Next minute, bang, they're gone.

I couldn't believe it. How could this be happening?

I

found

out later that day that the Indian government wanted to buy Sukhoi fighter

bombers from Russia.

And before Vladimir Putin sold them to India, he stopped and said, well, what

about my air crew who are in jail in Calcutta?

I realized that there may be a legal hole for me to run through here.

I reread the Indian Constitution. It deals with the question of equality

very strongly. And it states quite clearly, if two people have the same

conviction, You can't just release one and not release the other.

John!

And I knew at last I had something to fight with.

I was trying to put pressure on the British government to demand my release,

so I wrote to all sorts of people.

I'd wake up thinking, right, what am I going to do today? Who can I write to

today? Who can I harass today? Who can I make... Whose life can I make difficult

today?

I spent the next three or four years campaigning.

And it was very successful. It was a nightmare for British politicians at

stage. And in the end, it worked.

On the 4th of February 2004...

Finally, I was released, and it was an extraordinary moment.

I'm feeling a mixture of being elated and completely relieved. It was suddenly

the fight's over.

I'd been locked in an Indian jail for eight years.

It felt very, very good indeed.

And I thought, yes, I'm out of jail when I sat in that vehicle.

I was a free man.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting on a BA flight to London.

That was it. I was back home.

What do we know about what really happened? Well, to a great extent, the

have been filled in. I now know that it wasn't Kim Davies' plot. It was the

Indian government.

that hired Kim Davey to get guns and give them to a group to topple the

government of West Bengal.

So it was an internal Indian power struggle.

The British government knew about that.

They were certainly a party to it.

You know, you don't appreciate freedom until you lose freedom.

And I've had that experience. So I probably have a better appreciation of

have now than I ever have throughout my whole life.

All in all, I hope I'm not bitter and twisted about it.

And I'm enjoying living life.

I'm getting on a bit now. I'm too old to go and sell AK -47s to people.

I own and operate a cafe in Yorkshire.

There's much more to do and to get on with. I look to the future, not to the

past.