‘The Delhi Directive’: The Journalist Who Exposed India’s Biggest Cover-Ups Now Takes On the Intelligence Agencies

When Anirudhya Mitra sat down with former Director General of Police Anil Raturi at the Crime Literature Festival of India in Dehradun on December 15, 2025, to discuss his latest book “The Delhi Directive: The Inside Story of Secret Operations by Intelligence Agencies,” the conversation revealed an unusual dynamic: a journalist who has spent decades exposing intelligence failures discussing spy craft with a former top cop—and both acknowledging uncomfortable truths about India’s secretive security apparatus.

“Intelligence work demands complete responsibility and commitment,” Raturi observed, according to Garhwal Post’s coverage. Yet he admitted that “intelligence professionals remain largely unsung due to secrecy, even as their mistakes attract swift attention.”

That tension—between necessary secrecy and essential accountability—appears to be at the heart of Mitra’s new work. And if his previous book is any indication, “The Delhi Directive” won’t shy away from exposing those “mistakes” that intelligence agencies would prefer remain hidden.

Fiction as Truth-Telling

According to Garhwal Post, Mitra told the festival audience that while he “chose fiction to allow for narrative flexibility,” the book remains “grounded in extensive on-ground research.” He emphasized that “characters are central to his storytelling, noting that a person’s core personality does not change with their profession.”

This approach—using fictional techniques to tell factual stories—allows Mitra to protect sources, explore classified operations, and construct narratives around officially unacknowledged events. The subtitle promises “The Inside Story of Secret Operations by Intelligence Agencies”—and coming from Mitra, a journalist with an 11-year track record of breaking stories that powerful institutions wanted suppressed, this is not an idle promise.

The Man Who Broke India’s Biggest Stories

To understand why “The Delhi Directive” matters, you need to understand who Anirudhya Mitra is. According to HarperCollins India, during his investigative journalism career from 1982 to 1993 at The Times of India and India Today, the now-65-year-old broke several stories that defined an era:

The Bofors scam that helped bring down Rajiv Gandhi’s government, Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and subsequent manhunt, drug wars spanning India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, money laundering by BCCI bank, corruption in the judiciary, and the operations of Indian-model-turned-spy Pamela Bordes.

As one Amazon UK reviewer noted: “It takes guts to cover a story like this as the life of the author/journalist was under threat as well back in the 1990’s.”

“Ninety Days”: Exposing RAW’s Failures

In 2022, Mitra published “Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassins” through HarperCollins India. What The Wire called “the most comprehensive account of the biggest manhunt launched in India” became a devastating indictment of intelligence failures.

Critically, The Wire noted, Mitra exposed “how foolishly the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), which should have actually known better, claimed that the LTTE could not have killed Gandhi – and said so to prime minister Chandra Shekhar. RAW officials were insistent despite mounting evidence to the contrary.”

According to Medium reviewer Sameer Gudhate, Mitra “worked closely with the CBI during their investigation. So, when he writes, it’s not from hearsay. It’s lived, felt, and deeply personal.”

What distinguished Mitra’s work was his refusal to reduce complex events to simplistic narratives. According to Amazon reviewers, he “humanizes the assassins” without justifying their actions.

Goodreads reviewers praised the book’s unflinching examination of intelligence agency lies, the sympathy some Tamil Nadu police officers had for the LTTE, and the lack of cooperation among agencies that nearly botched the operation.

The Wire’s M.R. Narayan Swamy wrote: “Mitra’s account reads like an electrifying and enthralling thriller. I finished the book in one go.” Multiple reviewers noted it “would make up for a good web series or movie”—which became reality, as HarperCollins notes it is “NOW A MAJOR WEB SERIES.”

The Method: Complexity Over Simplicity

What distinguished Mitra’s work was his refusal to reduce complex events to simplistic narratives. According to Amazon reviewers, he “humanizes the assassins” without justifying their actions, exploring uncomfortable questions like why a young woman would become a human bomb.

Amazon reviewers highlighted his ability to balance thriller elements with careful documentation of institutional failures—a signature approach that appears central to “The Delhi Directive.” They noted that “some questions are left unanswered because of the impact those answers may have on this society,” with Mitra promising future revelations. Whether “The Delhi Directive” delivers those answers remains to be seen.

Writing critically about intelligence agencies—institutions with vast resources, legal protections for secrecy, and demonstrated willingness to protect their operations—requires exceptional courage. India’s intelligence apparatus operates largely beyond public scrutiny. RAW doesn’t even have statutory basis. The Intelligence Bureau’s operations are similarly opaque.

After his journalism career ended in 1993, according to HarperCollins, Mitra moved into television drama with UTV in Mumbai, then film production in Southeast Asia, before returning to investigative writing—each transition adding tools for telling difficult truths compellingly.

“The Delhi Directive” returns him to the story he’s been reporting his entire career: how India’s most secretive institutions operate, who they serve, what happens when they fail, and why the public rarely learns about it.

The question isn’t whether Mitra has the sources, skill, or courage to write this story. His career answers that. The question is whether India’s intelligence establishment is ready for someone with his track record to examine their most sensitive operations.

Based on how they reacted when he exposed their failures in “Ninety Days,” probably not. Which makes “The Delhi Directive” all the more worth reading.

The story, conceptualized and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk, was aggregated by AI from several news sources.