Charging senior officers: Old ghosts revived to haunt careers?

SRINAGAR: What do Lt Gen Bikram Singh and Kashmir DGP Kuldeep Khoda have in common? Both have been in the firing line during action against militants in Kashmir. Both have been dragged to courts for events a decade ago, just as their careers were poised at a delicate point. But the people know little other than the allegations against them.
In October 2011, a petition filed in the J&K high court alleged that in March 2001, Lt Gen Bikram Singh, then a brigadier commanding a Rashtriya Rifles sector in Kashmir, was responsible for a fake encounter in which a labourer was killed and passed off as a foreign militant.Singh, tipped to be the next Army chief, is now in the unenviable situation of being the main accused in a court of law.
For most observers, the timing of the petition and subsequent play in the media are signs of internal wrangling in the Army. It is being pointed out that the next in line, if Singh doesn’t get the top job, would be Lt Gen K T Parnaik of the Northern Command.
Even a basic examination of the circumstances of the alleged fake encounter Lt Gen Singh is accused of will raise eyebrows. “Then brigadier, Singh was wounded in action and another officer died. One militant was killed. Since March 2001, not one person has claimed the encounter was faked,” said an Army officer on condition of anonymity. Even the petitioners, one of them the slain man’s mother, say they neither filed a police complaint nor saw the body.
Dirty war of the 90s lives on
Their claim is based on what unknown eyewitnesses told them 10 years ago. “The NGO Yes Kashmir that helped file the petition has no history of litigation. This is the first and only case it has. And no one has an answer why it suddenly decided to go to court after 10 years,” said a civil society source. In such battles, the media is a force multiplier. It can be used to create a controversy. The mere fact of an event attracting media attention becomes the deciding proof of the basic allegation.
In Kashmir, the latest allegations are a replay of what happened with DGP Kuldeep Khoda, who was nearing the end of his tenure in September 2011. Srinagar was rife with rumours that he might get an extension. Then surfaced an old crime branch report related to Khoda’s tenure as DIG, Jammu, a decade ago.
Its publication was followed by a petition in the high court by victims of the fake encounter Khoda had allegedly overseen. Events gathered a dizzying pace. Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan appeared on behalf of the petitioners and held a press conference in Srinagar.
Demands were raised to remove Khoda. Every week in some national newspaper or magazine the same basic report was published. The fact that a subsequent crime branch report had exonerated Khoda, that the main accused in the case was a renegade militant tried by the police, was relegated.
Then it suddenly ended. Khoda, sources said, is unlikely to get an extension. “The campaign worked; its architect is believed to be a high-profile officer from Khoda’s own department repaying an old grudge,” said a police department source.
Twenty years of unrest have introduced a vibrant press. But the dirty war of the 90s also made for strange bedfellows where patronage and protection were essential for survival. These networks survive and prosper. These taints are also carried by men in uniform.