Episode Details

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Anirudhya Mitra spent his years at India Today and The Times of India breaking the stories most reporters never got near: the Bofors scam, the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, the drug wars running through India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. His book Ninety Days, on the hunt for Rajiv Gandhi's killers, became a national bestseller and the basis for the SonyLIV series The Hunt. His latest, The Delhi Directive, goes inside R&AW's covert war and the operations Delhi will never admit to. He has spent decades cultivating intelligence sources, recording meetings no one knew were being recorded, and keeping notes on some of the most powerful men in the country. Blunt, precise, and completely unromantic about how the spy game actually works.

In this episode, Vinamre and Anirudhya discuss:

• India's intelligence machine — RAW, IB, and how the NSA became its most powerful figure under Ajit Doval
• Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon — empire-building over pure terror, and the ISI deal behind his Karachi refuge
• The Nikhil Gupta case — Vikas Yadav, the Pannun plot, and a spy's life abroad
• Jadhav, Bishnoi, Goldy Brar — why captured spies stay alive, and prisoner swaps via Meng Wanzhou
• A.S. Dulat and whether agencies serve themselves or the government
• The craft — secret recordings, notes on powerful men, phone tapping, and "off the record" costs
• Cultivating sources — earning trust, resisting narratives, using AI to avoid being played

Follow Anirudhya Mitra on:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anirudhya.mitra/

X: https://x.com/AnirudhyaMitra3

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Coming Up

00:02:02 - Intelligence hierarchy, Doval, Dhurandhar

00:07:18 - Replace your coffee with this

00:08:24 - Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon

00:12:17 - Nikhil Gupta, Vikas Yadav, Pannun

00:29:25 - Kulbhushan Jadhav, Lawrence Bishnoi, Goldy Brar

00:36:13 - Spy world goes mainstream, Dulat

00:40:40 - Head of R&AW

00:43:28 - Media controlled by the government

00:47:19 - Agencies: deep state or controlled?

00:54:19 - Secretly recording sources, sting stories

01:02:36 - Keeping notes on powerful people

01:09:32 - Off the record, sources, phone tapping

01:15:32 - Access to power, earning trust

01:23:11 - Fighting fake narratives, AI fact-check

01:30:11 - Conclusion

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Vinamre Kasanaa is a writer at heart, podcaster and entrepreneur by craft.

He spends a significant part of his time reading and researching.

With over 500 podcasts under his belt, he’s interviewed everyone—from HNIs and industry leaders to e