The key point, of course, a has already been noted above, is that it is now obvious that these documents could only have been signed after the overt Indian intervention in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. When the Indian troops arrived at Srinagar air field, that State was still independent. Any agreements favourable to India signed after such intervention cannot escape the charge of having been produced under duress. It was, one presumes, to escape just such a charge that the false date 26 October 1947 was assigned to these two documents. The deliberately distorted account of that very senior Indian official, V.P. Menon, to which reference has already been made, was no doubt executed for the same end. Falsification of such a fundamental element as date of signature, however, once established, can only cast grave doubt over the validity of the document as a whole .
An examination of the transactions behind these four documents in the light of the new evidence produces a number of other serious doubts. It is clear, for example, that in the case of (c) and (d), the exchange of letters between the Maharajah and Lord Mountbatten, Lord Mountbatten’s reply must antedate the letter to which it is an answer unless, as seems more than probable, both were drafted by the Government of India before being taken up to Jammu on 27 October 1947 (by V.P. Menon and Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister M.C. Mahajan, whose movements, incidentally, are correctly reported in the London Times of 28 October 1947) after the arrival of the Indian troops at Srinagar airfield. The case is very strong, therefore, that document (c), the Maharajah’s letter to Lord Mountbatten, was dictated to the Maharajah.