In the mid-1960s, RAW set up two covert groups, Counterintelligence Team-X (CIT-X) and Counterintelligence Team-J (CIT-J). CIT-X as it was setup for operations inside Pakistan while CIT-J was for operation at Khalistani groups. These were a shadow cell within RAW. The existence of CIT-X was first revealed in former RAW official B. Raman’s 2007 book ‘The kaoboys of R&AW.’
What emerges from the accounts of former spies is that Indian intelligence agencies employed two types of operatives; Spies and wreckers. CIT-X was headed by an additional secretary but kept away from RAW’s Pakistan desk. The ‘X-men” reported directly to the agency chief even as they infiltrated trained wreckers across the border into Pakistan cities to plant explosives. “Low-grade bombs, no plastic explosives,” according to a former RAW official. They were used to “just to raise the cost of Pakistan’s covert war against India” i.e. to put an end to the ISI's interference in Punjab.
CIT-X was revived by Indira Gandhi in 1968 with the setup of RAW and continued later by Rajiv Gandhi in the early 1980’s when Pakistan spread-out the flames of Khalistani insurgency in Punjab. CIT-X operatives were used in retribution strikes inside Pakistan.
Spies were recruited by RAW talent spotters who spread-out through border villages looking for physically fit, educated, unemployed youth willing to undertake risky missions. These low-level operatives were used for missions considered too risky for serving intelligence officials.
Hundreds of youngsters were recruited through safe houses situated along border towns by recruiting agents from RAW who operated using fake names. The rented safe houses were frequently changed. There were entire villages that worked in intelligence gathering, including one in Punjab.
Spies were trained for more than a year in spy craft: mastering Urdu, reading maps and visually measuring distances. Recruits were given fake names, identities and Pakistani ID cards. Agents who stayed for long underwent circumcision (surgical removal of the foreskin of males). Spies were thought Urdu and how to say their daily Islamic prayers to blend into the crowd. The recruits knew the consequences of capture: torture, interrogation and solitary confinement.
Sawhney a former spy runs an Ex-Sleuths Association in Jammu Bakshi Nagar; set up in 1992 it has 60 members on its rolls. Over the years, Sawhney has painstakingly tracked down hundreds of burned agents like him scattered across the border districts of three states, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan—their bodies scarred from being strung to ceiling hooks in prisons, knees and ankles hammered with cobber’s nails, genitals numbed by electric shocks.
Though the existence of CIT-X has seen many ups and down’s with every new PM from its revive and shutting down. Existence of CIT-X at present is not known because in 1997 with I.K. Gujral as PM, CIT-X was shut down and after that to in 1998 Atal Bihari Vajpayee also rejected demand from RAW to revive CIT-X.
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