(As Defence Lawyer)
TNN / Mar 25, 2018, 03:27 IST:
NEW DELHI: The Army has dropped all charges and called off the general court martial (GCM) against Colonel Hunny Bakshi, the former commanding officer of the controversial Technical Support Division (TSD), which was set up in 2010 when General V K Singh was the Army chief and disbanded soon after he retired in 2012.
The TSD, a small intelligence outfit with a core group of barely four officers and 30 other soldiers, faced a flurry of allegations that ranged from misuse of secret funds and use of off-the air interceptors to tap phones of top defence ministry officials to attempts to topple the Omar Abdullah government in J&K and change the line of succession in the Army.
But Gen V K Singh (retd), who had a messy battle with the previous UPA government on his date-of-birth issue and is now a minister of state for external affairs in the NDA government, has always defended TSD, stressing it was tasked to carry out special operations to protect the country’s security and interests. The GCM, being held at Ambala under a brigadier, on Thursday night dropped the proceedings against Col Bakshi for allegedly mishandling classified information and other charges.
This came after Col Bakshi contended there were legal infirmities in the Court of Inquiry against him and that he had neither been provided documents crucial to his defence, nor been given adequate opportunity to cross examine witnesses. The GCM was called off for noncompliance of Army Rule 180, which gives the right to personnel for cross-examining witnesses against them, as well as failure to act in accordance with guidelines laid down for cases connected to loss of classified information.
“The Army is likely to absolve him of all charges, and not hold the GCM proceedings afresh,” said a senior officer. Gen V K Singh’s successor as the Army chief, General Bikram Singh (retd), had disbanded the TSD after a “Board of Officers” led by then director-general of military operations Lt-Gen Vinod Bhatia had blamed the covert unit on several counts, including misuse of secret “general staff (GS) funds” and conduct of “unauthorised operations”.
The cases against members of TSD, including Col Bakshi, had begun after a Havildar from the outfit was allegedly intercepted with classified information on a compact disc by the Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala in May 2012.