A Major-General facing Army disciplinary proceedings for alleged sexual harassment has claimed himself to be a victim of a factional feud that has erupted in the wake of the surprise appointment of General Bipin Rawat as the Army chief in December 2016, superseding Eastern Army Commander Lt. Gen. Praveen Bakshi.
According to his filing before the Armed Forces Tribunal in New Delhi, Major-General M.S. Jaswal, whose promotion to the rank of Lieutenant-General is stuck because of the allegations, has claimed that he was the victim of a “carefully orchestrated, deep-rooted conspiracy against him to frame him in a false charge and malign his military reputation so as to deny him his next rank and all due to the personal bias of Lt. Gen. Praveen Bakshi.”
He has listed two reasons Lt. Gen. Bakshi has targeted him: One is that Lt. Gen. Bakshi is “targeting those officers who he feels owe allegiance to the current Chief of Army Staff.” The second reason is that in 2010 when both Lt. Gen. Bakshi and he were posted together in Pune, “he had complained against” Lt. Gen. Bakshi to the then Army Commander, HQ Southern Command.
The complaint
A young woman Army officer in the legal branch of the Assam Rifles complained that Major-General Jaswal misbehaved with her on October 19, 2016, a day before he stepped down as an Inspector-General of the paramilitary force. She submitted a written complaint on October 22, 2016 about alleged molestation when she went to his house in the evening for some official work. Major-General Jaswal was to join the Lucknow-based Central Army Command, but was attached to 17 Corps for disciplinary proceedings.
“It is the Director General, Assam Rifles, Respondent No. 4, which come under the Ministry of Home Affairs, who alone is the competent authority to deal with this case by recalling the applicant under Defence Service Regulations Para 453 to Assam Rifles for investigating and progressing of the case,” he claimed. Instead, the complaint was handled by the Eastern Command.
