The Purulia Arms Drop Case has marred bilateral relations for decades. Now, Denmark and India have apparently reached an understanding on the basis of which, on 23 June 2023, the Danish Attorney General recommended that Kim Davy be extradited for prosecution in India. 

In 2010-11, a lower court in Denmark followed by the Eastern High Court had both refused to extradite Davy. They found India's diplomatic guarantees at the time insufficient to protect Davy from the risk of torture or degrading treatment. The Attorney General has not published the details of the new agreement, and it remains to be seen what the Danish courts will decide this time around, if, as expected, Kim Davy will challenge his extradition in court. 

I review this case below and suggest what may define its future course.

The Past

Kim Davy (aka Niels Holck) was already an experienced smuggler when, in 1995, he organized the airdrop of automatic rifles, ammunition, anti-tank grenades and rocket launchers for the Ananda Marga over the group's rural headquarters in Purulia in West Bengal. Davy was himself a follower of the sect, which, he felt, was persecuted by the ruling communists in the state. 

As per Davy, his gift of arms was a selfless act of international solidarity. The airdrop was poorly executed, and the police recovered the weapons. The Latvian-Russian crew and the British middleman, Peter Bleach, were arrested at Bombay airport. They ended up spending several years in jail in Calcutta. 

Davy, however, escaped from the airport and mysteriously found his way back to Denmark.

Ananda Marga (The Path of Bliss) was founded by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, a North Indian railway official with Bengali roots. A self-taught guru, Sarkar combined yoga, meditation and esoteric tantric rituals with agricultural development and other projects in a political philosopy that was anti-communist, but also contained a Marxist-inspired doctrine of revolution. 

In 1976, Sarkar and four of his close associates were convicted of murdering six renegade members of the sect. Sarkar’s followers have often implored his innocence, but it is not inconceivable that religious leaders may use violence to establish the cosmic order or to test followers. The sect gained a bad reputation, not least in the left-wing West Bengal, where it stood strong. Centrally, Indira Gandhi banned the sect. However, Ananda Marga was legalized again after she lost the 1977-election, and Sarkar was later acquitted. 

During these years, the western followers of the sect were radicalized. As the British High Commission in New Delhi wrote to London in March 1977: “We are not convinced that this movement is nothing more than a bunch of spiritual yogurt-eaters.” (JM Macgregor, confidential tele-letter on The Activities of the Ananda Marga from British High Commission, New Delhi to South Asian Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, 31 March 1977, FCO 37/1997). 

In 1978, India's Prime Minister Morarji Desai was supposedly the target of an assassination attempt in Australia. As convincingly told in the book The Hilton Bombing, a young Australian follower of the sect, Evan Pederick, placed explosives in a rubbish bin near the hotel, where Desai and other leaders were staying. The bomb did not detonate as planned, but instead killed two sanitation workers and a policeman, who were at work the next day. Pederick regretted his actions and after his release, he became an Anglican priest. 

According to Kim Davy, Ananda Marga was still up against a Stalinist regime comparable to North Korea, when he dropped the weapons over Purulia in West Bengal in 1995. The weapons did not kill anyone at the time. He did not regret his attempt to arm the Margis, arguing that they had a right to self-defence. 

Moreover, he has maintained that he acted in conjunction and cooperation with the Indian federal police authorities (CBI and/or RAW) and important Indian politicians, who wanted the communists to lose power in West Bengal. 

In this counter-narrative, Davy did not really arm the Ananda Margis. Instead, it portrays him as a smaller link in a major offensive against the communists in West Bengal waged across international borders by the deep state and leading politicians. In this - real or farfetched - plot, Bleach and Davy appear sometimes as partners in crime, and sometimes as plotting against each other. From the outside, however, they may appear simply as two shady entrepreneurs, who ran out of luck. 

The Present 

Today, West Bengal is no longer ruled by the communist parties, but by a regional party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which has not had the same long conflict with the Ananda Marga as the communists. In New Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power. The BJP is based on a Hindu cadre organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), aiming to unite the Hindus. 

However, the Ananda Margis has not become an integral part of the new Hindu India as defined by the BJP and the RSS. At the same time, it also seems that the fear and loathing harbored by many Indians towards the group has subsided. Today, the Ananda Marga is more of an average NGO than an occult fighting group. Therefore, if Davy will face trial in Kolkata, the overall situation will be less tense today than in the past. The Ananda Marga movement, which has factionalized, seems to be keeping a low profile on the matter. 

Denmark has previously insisted that, if extradited, Davy should be arraigned before an ordinary court to ensure transparency, but at the same time, Danish authorities wanted the case to be processed quickly. It is easier said than done. 

For example, when the railway minister, LN Mishra, was murdered in 1975, it was not until 2014 that three Ananda Margis and a lawyer were convicted of the murder, but only to be set free a year later. A case processing time of nearly 40 years! 

Peter Bleach was tried in Kolkata. It took the lower court around four years to decide the case. If Davy maintains his claim that CBI or RAW, or certain Indian politicians, had given him the go-ahead for the airdrop, and if the court in Kolkata chooses to investigate this claim, the case could drag on. This will increase the risk that India's security guarantees will be put to the test.

As for human rights in India today, a future Danish court is likely to take note of the fact that India – like many other countries – has become more of an “authoritarian” or “illiberal” democracy, where religious and personal freedom, as well as the freedom of the press, have been curtailed. 

Relations between the government in New Delhi and its critics around the country and on the Internet are at their most strained in decades. Prominent intellectuals and activists have been jailed on loose charges. The Indian courts have not always been seen as an effective safeguard against this, even though the Supreme Court often asserts its autonomy. 

However, this downward trend need not affect the Purulia Arms Drop Case, where successive governments in New Delhi have taken the same position, namely that the state is well within its rights to put Davy before a judge. While the current Indian government is known for letting Hindus get away with a little of everything, in this case, interestingly, the government wants to prosecute a Hindu sympathizer. 

Whether one attributes this to a general sense of justice, the will to maintain a state monopoly on violence, a determination to prevent uprisings sponsored by extra-regional non-state actors, or the desire to hold white criminals accountable before a native judge (a principle already enshrined in the 1800s), the result is the same: Consensus in the highest political circles across changing governments. 

This will help to isolate the Purulia Arms Drop from other agendas, and, therefore, make it more likely that Danish courts may agree to an extradition.

In 2010-11, Davy’s eloquent legal counsel mustered a series of arguments to quash the extradition order. The bench basically rejected all these arguments, except the ones relating to India’s poor human rights record. India has signed the UN Convention against Torture, but as of July 2023 it is the only country, along with Brunei, Haiti, and Palau, that has not ratified it. 

The possibility of extradition is important at a time when many states have a common interest in fighting international crime and terror. This possibility is weakened because India has not fully acceded to the convention. Notably, the Kolkata High Court pointed this out to the central government in New Delhi shortly after the Eastern High Court in Denmark delivered its judgment in 2011. 

When the international regulatory framework is not sufficient, countries become more dependent on the craft of diplomacy. It can quickly become costly and difficult if other Danes - and Indians living in Denmark - demand tailored special treatment in order to allow themselves to be extradited.

A future Danish court may also find it problematic that in some cases India has created uncertainty as to whether the country actually intends to honor the guarantees it has made. For instance, in 2002, India promised Portugal that the terrorist-accused gangster Abu Salem would not receive the death penalty or more than 25 years in prison, if he were extradited. 

Even so, in 2022, the CBI created uncertainty about the release, and the Ministry of Home Affairs argued that the issue of a pardon would only become relevant after the 25 years had passed. The Supreme Court in New Delhi maintained that if the executive does not clearly stand by the promises made at the highest level, this will have “international ramifications” and erode India's credibility.

Should Davy be extradited, it appears that his trial in Kolkata will take place in the City Sessions Court, close to the state High Court. Davy is likely to be kept under some form of house arrest without access to the press. In 2011, he was expected to be jailed. If India has now agreed that Davy may be tried without being jailed, this concession will remove a major stumbling block for the Danish courts to allow the extradition to go ahead. 

The trial will likely be open to the public. Davy’s Danish lawyer will not be able to plead in court, and may not even be able to assist his client outside of court. The Indian Bar Association's new “fly-in-fly-out” rules allow foreign lawyers to advise multinational companies in India on business matters, but this opening is unlikely to apply in Davy’s case. 

If Davy is extradited and India does not comply with the agreement regarding the extradition, the relation between Denmark and India could again turn sour, and India would be in a difficult position the next time the country demands someone extradited. 

If, on the other hand, a trial in India is carried out without major problems, and Davy does not suffer any harm before he is returned to Denmark to serve a possible prison sentence, this will put Denmark in a better position to have people extradited from India, if and when this comes up. For its part, India, clearly, would stand a better chance of convincing the Danish government and the courts that future extraditions are feasible under Danish law. 

Denmark and India are now “strategic partners” between which mutual exchange should be expected.

 (The views expressed here are solely of the author.)