General Deepak Kapoor maintained that the defence forces are the only organisation that takes expeditious and judicious action once any irregularities are found.
Army chief General Deepak Kapoor, under attack for going soft on scam-tainted military secretary Lieutenant General Avadesh Prakash, took a high moral ground on the Sukhna land scam on Thursday, promising “due action” without personal biases.
Citing the army’s record of swiftly acting against corrupt, Kapoor said he would “dispense justice that is firstly fair, secondly just and based on facts of the case and thirdly takes into account the culpability of the individuals involved. And fourthly, “justice that is not swayed by external considerations — be it personal biases or media pressure or any other aspect.”
Gen Kapoor did not specify why he watered down the recommendation of eastern army commander Lt Gen VK Singh to summarily dismiss Prakash for forcing the 33 corps leadership to reverse their stand, and give security clearance to a sprawling educational complex proposed by Prakash’s friend and contractor Dilip Agarwal.
Gen Kapoor also watered down the recommendations against Major General PC Sen, who too is indicted in the scam.
Besides Prakash, Lt Generals PK Rath and Ramesh Halgali, and three other officers including Sen have been found blameworthy by the army’s own inquiry.
The army chief refused to provide any direct answers on the specifics of the case, saying he was like a judge hearing a case, so it won’t be proper of him to say anything specific.
Gen Kapoor argued that the armed forces were among “a handful of organisations that take expeditious and judicious action” against corruption.
Addressing a press conference for the first time after the Sukhna scam surfaced, Gen Kapoor started his interaction by reading a prepared text with the above claims on the case.
But that did not stop the media, which kept asking several questions on the issue, only to be told that he would not go into details of the case.
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