Earlier this week, Delhi Police registered an FIR under charges of criminal conspiracy in connection to the memoir’s leak. The move followed questions raised by India Today Digital over how an unpublished book reached Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Amid the ongoing row over former Army Chief General MM Naravane’s memoir Four Stars of Destiny, the Delhi Police Special Cell has launched a multi-nation investigation into its alleged leak. According to sources, the book entered global digital markets before receiving the mandatory clearance from the Defence Ministry.
On Tuesday, Delhi Police registered an FIR under charges of criminal conspiracy in connection to the leak. The move followed questions raised by India Today Digital over how an unpublished book reached Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Preliminary findings have suggested that the leak was not an isolated act of piracy but a “planned and coordinated operation” that bypassed official approval processes meant for defence-related publications.
Investigators are now tracking digital and financial trails in the US, Canada, Germany and Australia, where the book was allegedly made available online prior to official clearance.
The controversy over the unpublished memoir shows no signs of abating, a week after Gandhi attempted to quote from it in Parliament, sparking a major political storm. The book’s publisher, Penguin India, has clarified that the memoir was never published and no authorised copies exist.
GLOBAL CIRCULATION BEFORE APPROVAL
Investigators have found that the leaked version of Naravane’s memoir was not only circulated internationally but was first made available online in foreign markets. Online sales were detected on platforms operating in the US, Canada, Australia and Germany.
Sources said the first upload of the leaked material was traced to a website using the “.io” domain extension — a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) originally assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory and widely used by tech platforms and startups.
The content was subsequently mirrored across multiple hosting platforms.
ISBN TRAIL RAISES RED FLAGS
A key focus of the investigation is the presence of an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) in the leaked copy. The 13-digit identifier — mandatory for commercial publishing and distribution — indicates that the book had entered the formal publishing system.
Officials say the presence of an ISBN suggests the leaked version was not a raw manuscript or draft, but a processed and publication-ready copy.
Penguin India, the publisher, is being questioned regarding the ISBN registration and distribution process.
An ISBN is a globally recognised unique identifier assigned to each edition and format of a book, facilitating cataloguing, distribution and sales. Separate ISBNs are issued for different formats, such as hardback and e-book editions.
When Aaj Tak and India Today examined online book-selling platforms in the US, Canada, Australia and Germany, it found that the ISBN codes listed on these websites corresponded to Penguin India’s edition of Four Stars of Destiny.
