The Indian Army keeps fighting itself as the internal campaign against Technical Services Division intelligence operatives continues. At the top of the hit list of five officers from the TSD is the unit’s chief Colonel Hunny Bakshi, an intelligence corps officer considered a legend among his peers for his deep penetration network and counter intelligence skills. The Army could soon initiate court martial proceedings against Bakshi, who is now on “punishment posting” in the inconsequential Bangalore Sub-Area of the Army since December 2012.
The case relates to the arrest of the TSD’s head clerk Shivadasan on April 2012 in Kochi, caught when he was allegedly receiving a part payment in return for allegedly providing ISI classified information. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), which laid the “trap” to nab Shivadasan, had claimed the head clerk had demanded `1 crore from his ISI handler for handing over “information” on troop deployments and had sought an advance of `60 lakh. Sleuths from DRI claimed they had “trapped” the head clerk when he was about to hand over a compact disk, pen drive and documents holding sensitive information.
Though the arrest happened when General V K Singh—under whose tenure the TSD was set up in the aftermath of the 26/11 terror attacks—was still the army chief, the case gained traction only after his retirement in May 2012. In June 2012, a few days after General Bikram Singh succeeded him as Army chief, the details of the “trap” were leaked to the media.
Ahead of the leak, TSD had maintained that the head clerk was only a bait to get to ISI operatives working against India through contacts in Dubai and it was part of a larger counter-espionage game. In November 2012, the DRI handed over its case to the Army, which ordered a Court of Inquiry into the DRI “trap”. Apart from the head clerk, the inquiry also examined Bakshi and his role in the episode. Following the inquiry, the Army had carried out Summary of Evidence (SoE)—the process for preparing a chargesheet—in the case. The Army transferred Sivadasan’s custody to a unit, headed by present Army vice chief Dalbir Singh’s younger brother Col. Dharmbir Singh. He now awaits court martial, in which Bakshi too may be tried, sources said. This move comes after the head clerk had been attached to the unit for over 20 months without even a chargesheet. It was only after he moved the Armed Forces Tribunal for bail that the Army filed a tentative chargesheet against him, sources said.
Meanwhile, Bakshi put in his application for premature retirement on January 8, 2014. But, just three weeks later, he withdrew it and decided to continue in service after his seniors communicated that he would face “disciplinary action” in the case.
Action is yet to be taken on the Board of Officers’ report of 2013 on TSD in which, too, Bakshi’s name figures. The report suggested TSD paid off some Kashmir politicians to bring down the Omar Abdullah government, apart from paying a Kashmir NGO to file a court case against Bikram Singh in a fake encounter case. The TSD had been disbanded in mid-2013 after Gen Bikram Singh took over.
via The New Indian Express ,
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