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After ISRO spy case, time to ensure justice for Army veterans in Samba case

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The Samba spy case remains a blot on the face of our judiciary and the moribund defence and security establishment of this nation.  

As the Supreme Court awarded compensation to ISRO scientist S. Nambi Narayanan for wrongful, trumped up charges of being a spy, I was reminded of one of my best friends in school. He was the son of a retired Indian Army officer who mysteriously quit at an early age.

The real reason was that my friend’s father was dismissed from service for his role in the famous Samba spy case.

Why did he sell India’s interests, I had asked him back then in primary school.

His response has remained with me forever: “You think he did it? He would have committed suicide before even thinking about that”.

But then why were they all found guilty and dismissed from service, I persisted. “He is also looking for the answer along with the other officers. They were let down by the fauj,” my friend lamented.

His father became a pariah because of a greedy soldier, Swaran Dass, who passed on half-baked information to the Pakistanis for a few rupees.


Also read: ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan says Kalam wanted him to give up fight, but he refused


What is Samba spy case?

Even a bare perusal of the documents and case history shows there was no case, and it was all fabricated.

Based on intelligence inputs in 1975, two gunners of an artillery regiment – Dass and Aya Singh – were arrested for spying on behalf of Pakistan.

After days of custodial interrogation, Dass allegedly falsely implicated Captains R.S. Rathaur and A.K. Rana. Dass also gave an affidavit in 1994, acknowledging that he had been forced by military intelligence to name officers and others.

After what was clearly a sham probe, Rathore and Rana were also arrested and interrogated. Based on their alleged forced testimonies, several other officers, JCOs and NCOs were arrested. Although there was no evidence of their actual involvement except questionable statements, they were terminated from service on the orders of the President. Dass and Aya Singh were never charged with spying, but the officers named by them were never reinstated.

The legal battle

A group of officers like Majors Nirmal Ramchand Ajwani, R.K. Midha, S.P. Sharma and Captain Arun Sharma fought a protracted legal battle for their “honour”, pointing to various courts that they had been terminated from service on the basis of false statements that were later retracted.

The Delhi High Court in 2000 upheld their claim, but it was set aside by a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court in 2014. Last year, a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra dismissed the officers’ plea for access to “link files”, which were suddenly produced in the apex court before the 2014 ruling and shown in a secretive manner to the bench – 34 years after filing of the first case. But the officers were never allowed to examine the same.

In doing so, the court forgot that it was supposed to follow and uphold the principle of natural justice. The court remained unmoved even though a former IB chief had also acknowledged that the case was “baseless”.


Also read: India once thought this monk was a Chinese spy. Now, Modi govt will welcome him back


An interview that Dass gave in 2016 exposed the mockery of the entire process: “During those years of torture, all that the MI (Military Intelligence) officials wanted from me was to implicate others in the case. They only wanted lies. If I spoke the truth, I was being beaten, and if I spoke lies, I was being offered money and liquor… Then I started lying, taking names one after another. In this whole game, I downed one officer after another.”

Dass asked how anyone could fall for those lies. “Could I have so much money that whosoever met me, I took them to Pakistan? Didn’t officers have any brains of their own?” Among those Dass named was his battery commander Captain R.G. Ghalawat, Naib Subedar Daulat Ram, besides gunners Banarasi Lal, Babu Ram and Sriram. Ghalawat later died of a heart attack. “I named him for the harassment he meted out to me,” Dass says.

Similarly, Aya Singh named Captains A.K. Rana and R.S. Rathaur. “It was all fixed. The general court martial concluded the trial in one day and gave me seven years’ sentence on charges of desertion and not espionage,” says Dass.

If only our judges had read this before passing their judgment, these military officers might have received justice like Nambi Narayanan.

Principle of natural justice

The principle of natural justice says that no person can be punished without being afforded an opportunity to present his side of the case. And, to defend himself, the accused must be provided the material evidence against him.

But the Supreme Court ruling was a travesty of justice.

Ironically, in 2014, the three-judge SC bench that set aside the Delhi High Court judgment observed that there was “substance in the argument of the appellants (Centre) that the High Court while delivering the judgment dated 21.12.2000 overlooked” the principle of “res judicata”.

In lay terms, this refers to a legal matter achieving finality after having been adjudicated by the competent court.

Why, then, did this bench allow the government to buttress its case by presenting files that had previously not been shown to the courts? If it was material to the case, why were the officers not allowed to access or counter it?


Also read: Indian Army is worried now that men can legally have sex with other men


The Samba spy case remains a blot on the face of our judiciary and the moribund defence and security establishment of this nation.

Post-script: In India’s defence forces, unlike other fields, accountability is an important and strictly followed principle. Commanding officers of units and Brigadiers lose out on future advancement prospects if there are cases of minor transgressions like theft in the unit or major ones like laxity ahead of terrorist attacks on the unit. But, in the case of the so-called Samba spy ring, almost a 100 officers and jawans were indicted. Not one senior officer paid the price. In fact, one of the senior officers later became the director general of military intelligence (DGMI).

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