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Samba spy case: SC stays HC order
exonerating accused

A bench comprising Justice S P Bharucha and Justice Doraiswamy Raju admitted the Centre's petition challenging the order on the ground that the high court erred in appreciating the evidence.

The government said that the high court should not have entertained the petitions of the dismissed army officers as their petitions were dismissed repeatedly in three rounds of litigation earlier by the high court as well as the Supreme Court.

Thus, the matter had attained finality and the high court should not have interfered in the findings of the court martial proceedings, the government said in its petition.

Moreover, the government complained that the judgment of the high court came two years and four months after the judgment was reserved by it.

The government said the observation of the high court that it was not given all the documents pertaining to the court martial proceedings was totally false as in an earlier order the high court itself had said that all documents pertaining to the case had been filed.

The Delhi High Court in December last year, in its 111-page judgment, had exonerated two former captains R S Rathaur and A K Rana, who had been court martialled by the army and quashed the army orders dismissing seven other officers.

The high court had ruled that all the nine officers, who had been detained for years on the charge of spying for Pakistan, were now entitled to all the 'consequential benefits' since the action taken by the army against each of them was 'void in law'.

Severely criticising the army, the high court had said Rathaur and Rana had been convicted in the court martial proceedings 'without a shred of evidence'.

It had said that the Military Intelligence Directorate, which had initiated the action against the officers, could not 'assume the role of a prosecutor and a judge in its own cause'.

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