The Army on Monday said there was a "cover up" in the Sukna land scam case in Darjeeling in which three Lt Generals and a Major General are in the dock and it needs to go to the "bottom" of the issue.
Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising stated this while representing the Army in the Armed Forces Tribunal, which has been moved by former Military Secretary Lt Gen Avadesh Prakash against his Court Martial in connection with the case.
Prakash has questioned the Army's decision to order disciplinary action, which entails court martial, against him after deciding to take administrative action, which does not necessarily lead to court martial.
Justifying the Army's action, Jaising told the two-member Tribunal headed by Justice A K Mathur that the administrative action was never started and the Army was within its right to initiate disciplinary action against him.
"There is a cover-up going on and we have to find out who is at the bottom of this," she said about the land scam case in which Prakash and three other Generals have been indicted by a Court of Inquiry for giving a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) to a private realtor to construct an educational institute on a plot of land adjacent to Sukna army base in Darjeeling.
The Tribunal, which heard both the petitioner and the defendents for three days, reserved the order.
On Prakash's contention that the Army could not convert the administrative action into disciplinary action once he had filed his reply to the show cause notice issued to him, Justice Mathur said that after going through his own admission over links with the realtor Dilip Agarwal, Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor could have changed his decision.
"He (Army Chief) has already been over-favourable to you," Justice Mathur told Prakash through his lawyer Jyoti Singh. "Apparently, all things are mixed up. All fish stink and you pick up one and say only this stinks," he said.
On Prakash's questioning of disciplinary action against him, the Tribunal chief said "if you are on the same footing as Lt Gen (P K) Rath, there is reason for the Army chief to be above suspicion. He need not write these things (changes in the policy)."
Rath has also been indicted in the case.
During the six-hour hearing, Prakash's counsel raised a new issue of the composition of the Court Of Inquiry and said officers junior to Prakash were its members, which violated Army rules.
The Tribunal asked the army to submit the names of the persons who had been sent the signal for convening of the COI. "If it were a small fry like a Lt Col, you would not have held the COI under a Lt Gen-rank officer," the chairman of the Tribunal, which enjoys the powers of a High Court, told the Army's counsel.
The bench asked the army to explain why Rath took the name of Prakash in the COI after he and nine other witnesses had already deposed.
Jaisingh said Rath had already said in his statement to the COI that he had "pangs of conscience" after making his first statement in the COI and he had mentioned Prakash while answering questions.
