What became of the officials who were indicted by the Shah Commission? Except for a few, very few, all of them went on to have flourishing careers. They became secretaries, ministers, police chiefs and heads of intelligence agencies. The big takeaway from the Indian experience of the Emergency period was that government salaried stormtroopers were not accountable at all.

Although the Congress party paid a price for its excesses in the 1977 elections, the faceless members of those agencies and forces who became willing slaves to the autocratic regime had learnt an important lesson: that serving political masters is an easy path to professional success and material benefits, and that there would be no consequences—unlike the difficult task of upholding the Constitution and the trust of the taxpayers.

This book is about those willing slaves and their masters.

I have had a ringside view of this security establishment for over three decades. I did most of my schooling at a Sainik School, which has contributed hundreds of officers to the military. During our free time and even class hours in school, we were retold stories of their valour, and we basked in their glory. As a reporter, I mostly wrote about the security establishment. This includes the three military arms—army, navy, air force—and the coast guard; investigation agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate (ED), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Customs, Income Tax Department; and intelligence agencies such as the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), the intelligence arms of other agencies; state police forces and the paramilitary forces. I was very often overwhelmed by the courage and professionalism that I witnessed or heard of: the injured man who went back to the battlefield only to be killed; a young soldier who fell off an icy cliff as he fought on; a pilot who risked his life to save a city