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It was the early 1990s, and Ashok Malharrao Zoal was chasing a hot tip-off – about a foreign student running a compound in Pune in violation of visa rules.
“The suspect was residing in Kondhwa, and studied in a college in Pune. We had a typical police bike, which cannot be used to track down the suspect secretly. Also, there were no CCTV cameras installed everywhere, like today. We started tracking the suspect on foot. On foot, in civilian clothes, hiding a lot. This went on for about two weeks as we gathered confirmation of his activities. Finally, we confronted him. Based on the evidence gathered, he was deported,” recalls Zuwal who retired as assistant sub-inspector in 2016, after A year after he received the Chief of Police Medal for Distinguished Service.
According to several senior officers, 65-year-old Zoal was a major cog in the city’s Foreigners’ Registration Office (FRO) at a time when Pune was emerging as a global education hub. Today, looking back on a career filled with tips and hot pursuits, the President’s Medal’s demise quote sums up his life on the job: In 30 years of service, he identified six foreign nationals involved in espionage and 27 foreign nationals involved in anti-nationalism. Activities – they are all carried over.
Pune has been a nexus of the international hawala trade for rackets and drugs for a long time. We have seen foreigners from different countries engage in espionage and anti-India activities. I am happy to have the opportunity to be part of these operations,” says Zawal, adding that some details “cannot be shared due to confidentiality.”
Ashok Zawal receiving the Chief of Police Medal for Distinguished Service from the then Governor Chinnamanini Vidyasagar Rao
Zoual joined the police force as a constable in 1985. With the exception of a few years in police stations and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), he spent most of his service in the Anti-Corruption Operations Bureau, where he worked closely with intelligence men from the Intelligence Bureau (IB).
“When I joined FRO around 1988 most of the work was done by hand. We had no computer literacy. We relied mainly on human intelligence, which is important even today. Using technology for surveillance certainly helps but at the time it wasn’t available.” , We used to follow the suspects for several hours and several days on foot to collect information and evidence is among the main tasks,” he says.
As Zoal’s career progressed, and Pune emerged as an education centre, cases began piling up at the FRO. We noticed that some foreigners were using their visas and university cards as a cover to stay in the city for anti-social and even anti-national activities. We also learned that some have attached fake certificates to obtain their visas. Getting information about such suspicious activities was a challenge. There was no internet, no social media, and no smartphones. In fact, I didn’t have a cell phone until 2000. So technical monitoring, such as obtaining cell phone tower locations and call logs, wasn’t an option, Zewal says.
So what is the solution? It has developed sources among foreigners who will provide information about their compatriots involved in illegal activities. Fortunately, my education until graduation was in English, and I was able to interact with these sources in manageable English,” he says. In fact, while serving, Zoal went on to complete an MCom and an LLB. Lectures, lessons and exams despite a heavy work schedule.
Then again, no conversation with this intrepid veteran is complete without an account of one of his own investigations – tracking down a PhD student at the University of Pune who has appeared on the spy radar.
“We found that he had visited some sensitive locations in Pune… I visited his home under the pretense of police investigation. It was a large and luxurious home, and I found him leading a high-class lifestyle which I found suspicious. Close observation revealed that a taxi from Mumbai arrives every Friday, and picks him up from his residence , and take him to Mumbai and bring him back. I developed a cab driver as my source, who later gave us important clues. It turned out that the suspect was visiting his country’s consulate in Mumbai. We also found out that he was a PhD student in name only. Students had to submit progress reports on their research every six Our suspect has not filed a progress report on his search for four years.”
The result: the suspect was deported in 2012. Zual moved on to the next case.
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