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ShareNew Delhi: Former navy chief Admiral Sushil Kumar, who was named by the CBI in the Barak scam, has shown using the Right to Information Act (RTI) that the indigenous Trishul anti-missile system was not ready in 1999, when the Kargil War broke out. This, the admiral said, was the reason why the navy during his tenure had pushed for the Israeli Barak anti-missile system.
The CBI in 2006 named Admiral Kumar, along with Samata Party leaders George Fernandes (who was defence minister in the NDA government in 1999), Jaya Jaitley and RK Jain, and arms dealer Suresh Nanda, as a suspect in the Barak kickbacks case. In naming the five, the CBI had relied on the Tehelka tapes and claims by the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) that the indigenous Trishul project was in advance stages of development in 1999.
Through RTI, the admiral has shown that the CBI's FIR in the case might have had elementary mistakes. This raises the question whether the agency went overboard against a military chief, naming him a suspect without any tangible evidence other than a misleading claim by the DRDO which was developing Trishul.
The CBI implied that the navy ignored the Trishul and pushed for Barak in exchange for bribes. The reference to the Tehelka tapes pertained to RK Jain, a close political ally of Fernandes, admitting that he was paid Rs1 crore for pushing the Barak deal.
Admiral Kumar and the navy have been at pains to explain that the CBI's claims about Trishul were humbug and the decision to buy the Israeli anti-missile system was first taken in 1993-94.
Admiral Kumar made the point that during the Kargil conflict, Indian naval ships were sitting ducks against missile attacks. He had appealed to the prime minister, defence minister and others, saying that by naming a military chief in a CBI case for a decision that was taken as part of operational requirements, they were politicising the military.
For months, the ministry of defence and the DRDO stalled Admiral Kumar's RTI queries, citing national security. An appeal with the Central Information Commission forced the DRDO to come clean. The DRDO has now finally admitted that the "Trishul project (naval version) was sanctioned as a staff project in July 1983" and that it was converted "to technology demonstrator" in 2001. A staff project is meant for operational requirements of users, while a technology demonstrator is a mere lab experiment. The DRDO admitted that the project was given several fresh deadlines.
