When Russian spy Vasili Mitrokhin defected to the UK in 1992, he brought with him a planeload of documents of the activities of Soviet-era agency KGB. These went into two volumes of the Mitrokhin Archive.

In the second book is an entire chapter on India. It provides startling, eye-opening facts into how the Congress government of the day as well as the media and intelligentsia were totally compromised.

“It seemed like the entire country was for sale; the KGB and the CIA had deeply penetrated the Indian government. After a while neither side entrusted sensitive information to the Indians, realising their enemy would know all about it the next day," Oleg Kalugin, another senior Russian intelligence officer, is quoted saying in the book.

In 1978, the KGB had more than 30 agents in India, 10 of whom were Indian intelligence officers. It had 21 non-Communist politicians and 10 newspapers in its payroll.

Mitrokhin Archives is just one glimpse into how foreign money has been influencing........

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