Ved Prakash also describes how the army refused to
bring forward any document that Rathaur may have passed over to
Pakistan. Similar discrepancies arose in Rana's trial. To date,
it is not known if any GCM ever found out what documents were
passed over.
Then, there were other arrests that seemed vindictive.
Captain S R Nagial had been honourably acquitted in the 1975 GCM.
But another GCM was called on charges of loss of some documents
and he was sentenced to a seven-year jail term. The defence argued
Nagial wasn't even responsible for the safekeeping of those
documents.
Major R K Middha had apparently refused to testify
that Havaldar Ram Swarup was a drug addict and found himself implicated
in the same case. In a writ petition filed in the Delhi high court,
Middha also mentioned how he was told that charges against him
would be dropped if he implicated some other officers, including
a major-general. Middha refused and was removed from service under
"pleasure of the sovereign."
Major N R Ajwani, the deputy adjutant judge advocate-general
at the army's northern command, was said to have been implicated
when as the judge advocate at gunner Om Prakash's trial,
he refused to accept that the latter's testimony was voluntary.
Rana named him subsequently as a spy and a GCM was called against
him. Though the GCM was finally dissolved, Ajwani was dismissed
administratively.
How much of this is true or not will finally stand
to trial now. But if indeed as a former major-general said
on the condition that he not be named, "the Samba spy case
was the grossest miscarriage of justice I have ever seen," then there are other disturbing questions that need to be answered.
If most of these men were indeed innocent, who, if
anyone, was guilty? Already there are many unanswered questions.
Why were Aya Singh and Sarwan Dass charged for leave without absence
instead of espionage? Why were they reinstated?
Aya Singh was arrested again by the counter-intelligence
wing of the J&K police, entering India from the Pak border
in 1983. He was released on bail in 1986, arrested again in
July 1987, released in 1989 and finally shot dead while trying
to cross the border in December 1990. So what was he -- a Pakistani
spy, a double agent or a Pak spy working for some seniors in the
Indian army?
Besides, how was it that in the long list of accused
there was not a single officer above the rank of major? One brigadier
and a few lieutenant colonels who were picked up were subsequently released.
Is it that spying comes easier to the lower ranks or was someone
protecting the big fish?
Rathaur has directly accused (then Brigadier)
T S Grewal, who was then the deputy director of military intelligence,
of masterminding the whole affair and trying to divert attention
from others who were really Pak spies. Shouldn't such a major
accusation be investigated?
The biggest bombshell came when in 1994, a month
after Justice Sunanda Bhandare's judgement, Sarwan Dass, the second
half of the puzzle, said in a newspaper interview that he had
implicated other officers and men under severe torture.
So what is the truth? Were there in fact a hundred
spies, all operating in Samba at the same time? If not, did the
Indian army just err in what it did, or was there a conspiracy?
In either event, it was an unprecedented breach of national security.
Almost two decades later, can we hope to get some answers?
Kind courtesy: Sunday magazine
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