Months after secret documents recovered from him were >officially destroyed , an Army general court martial sentenced Havildar Sham Das D. to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment for leaking them. And, in the course of the court of inquiry and the court martial, different versions of the CD and its contents emerged, none of them certified or authentic. None of those facts seemed to have played much of a role in the decision to send Das to Tihar Jail.
The Hindu had on Monday reported how just five days before Union Minister Gen. V.K. Singh retired as its chief, the Army hurriedly destroyed documents and all communications related to secrets that Sham Das allegedly offered to the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence.
According to >documents made public online by The Hindu on Monday evening, between May 22 and May 25, 2012, the Southern Army Command, based in Pune, moved quickly to assemble two different boards of officers to carry out the destruction of all the documents in its possession regarding the Technical Services Division (TSD), the controversial military intelligence unit Gen. Singh had set up in 2010.
According to a report carried by The Indian Express on August 4, 2014, an internal inquiry by Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia, the then Director-General of Military Operations, had found that TSD had misused secret service funds.
Army’s case rested on destroyed evidence
Five days after Gen. V.K. Singh retired and almost 20 days after Sham Das was arrested, the Army issued a convening order for a court of inquiry (CoI) against the Havildar.
During the course of the CoI and the court martial later, a series of baffling developments took place, but none of it seemed to have had any effect on the final decision of the army court. For one, the entire proceedings against the Havildar were carried out after the key evidence in the case was officially destroyed.
So what was the evidence on which the proceedings were based?
First, Army headquarters produced a CD saying it was a copy of the original that was destroyed by the Southern Army Command. But it was not a certified copy.
The DRI official who appeared before the inquiry refused to recognise the CD produced by the Army, and instead produced a new CD. The CD that the DRI produced was different from the one the Army had destroyed.
Since the documents on the destruction of the original CD are now with The Hindu, there is a clear record of what exactly were the documents that Sham Das tried to pass around. Most importantly, it contained details of money spent by the TSD, while the new CD that the DRI representative produced before the CoI did not contain many of those files, according to the documents accessed by The Hindu.
Sham Das was tried by the court martial on five charges under of the Army Act and the Official Secrets Act in proceedings that ran between October 2014 and May 2015. On May 9, 2015, the court martial sentenced him “to be reduced to the ranks,” “to suffer ten years of RI [rigorous imprisonment]” and “to be dismissed from service.”
Citing reasons of secrecy, the Army refused to give him a copy of the court martial proceedings, further limiting his ability to file an appeal.
The Armed Forces Tribunal on September 10 issued notice to Army Headquarters on his plea that he be given a copy of the entire proceedings.
Under the scanner
> Army destroyed papers on V.K. Singh’s intel unit days before his retirement
Activities and funding of the Technical Services Division (TSD) — the intelligence unit set up in 2010, is under the scanner.
> Report on V.K. Singh’s ‘secret’ intelligence unit raises storm
The BJP claimed that he was being “hounded” for sharing the platform with the then-Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi at a rally of ex-servicemen.
> The charges against me are motivated, says Gen. V.K. Singh
The former Army Chief said it was “laughable and most absurd” that he was trying to topple the Jammu and Kashmir government.
> Gen. V.K. Singh admits ‘pro-India NGOs’ were funded
The secret intelligence unit had paid Rs.1.19 crore to J&K Minister Ghulam Hassan Mir and several others to carry out "welfare programmes.
