Fine art of smear: What's wrong with the allegations against General VK Singh

Let’s try this out for size: What does India’s Prime Minister do when he receives an internal army enquiry report alleging that the former chief of army staff spent Rs 8 crore on illegal surveillance equipment to spy, among others, on the defence minister; launched a smear campaign against officers; used covert intelligence funds to try and bring down a democratically-elected government? It’s obvious, right: he orders a criminal investigation into crimes against the Indian Constitution and high treason, just as the internal enquiry asks? Nope: his office does nothing for six months, then leaks the highlights to The Indian Express . That course of action, coming just days after former chief of army staff VK Singh shared a platform with Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in Rewari, is almost certain to lead to allegations that the government’s trying to smear its opponents with something that isn’t honey and butter. In essence, the key allegation is this: funds were “spent on purchase of interception equipment from a Singapore-based company in November, 2010, ostensibly meant to be deployed in the J&K 15 corps. In March 2012, following orders of the then-DG, MI, Lt Gen DS Thakur, the equipment was destroyed”. For the last year, the government’s been alleging—strictly off record—that General Singh misused this equipment to spy on defence minister AK Antony during his bruising face-off with the government last year. This key part of the story is an old one, centred around something called off-air interception—basically, surveillance equipment that allows hundreds of thousands of mobile phone conversations to be plucked out of the air, and digitally scanned for keywords or voices. The staggering capabilities of this equipment was revealed in  a Hindu-Wikileaks investigation in 2011. Former national security advisor MK Narayanan first authorised the purchase of off-air interceptors back in 2005-2006. The National Technical Research Organisation first began operating this equipment in New Delhi—though, since the law doesn’t allow it to conduct surveillance, it operated under the cover of the Intelligence Bureau. The equipment proliferated soon, with several state governments also purchasing off-air interceptors—eventually leading to credible allegations that it was was being generously used for political espionage . [caption id=“attachment_1122627” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Was the general involved in the scandal? Reuters[/caption] In the wake of the 26/11 attacks, meanwhile, the army was authorised to set up a new super-secret unit called the Technical Services Division, to fill gaps in its surveillance capabilities. It also purchased off-air surveillance equipment—which is now being claimed to have been destroyed in March, 2012. VK Singh says  the then-Director-General of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant-General Tejinder Singh bought the equipment. Tejinder Singh flatly denies this allegation. His supporters allege Colonel Hunny Bakshi turned the TSD into the chief’s personal dirty-tricks cell. Either way, though, we’re certain about this: these allegations don’t really matter for the purposes of the political spying issue. Intelligence Bureau counter-intelligence experts, who had first raised concerns over strange electronic signals in Anthony’s office, later determined them to be emanating from a malfunction in the electrical wiring. In any case, the off-air interceptors couldn’t have been tapping his phones, since he conducted almost all his conversations through landlines—still vulnerable to eavesdropping, of course, but not through the TSD’s off-air interceptors. The Indian Express quotes its sources as making two related allegations: that Military Intelligence isn’t authorised to conduct covert or clandestine operations, and that it siphoned off money to buy the interceptors from covert funds. It doesn’t take a lot to see, though, that this argument is deeply disingenuous. India has no legal framework for any of its intelligence services, so no valid authorisation for covert operations can be issued anyway. It’s just plain bizarre to argue that Military Intelligence shouldn’t spy on Pakistani operatives across the Line of Control, or defend its installations using surveillance technologies—both of which require clandestine methods and technologies. The other key allegations in The Indian Express story are even less robust. The story says Rs 1.19 crore was provided to Jammu and Kashmir agriculture minister Ghulam Hassan Mir to bring down the state government— perhaps because of its opposition to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The thing is, Mir is an independent, so he’d have had to corral multiple legislators to stitch up a majority in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly, which has 87 members—even assuming the Army could have stitched up governor NN Vohra to condone skulduggery. Now, consider the line-up: the National Conference, with 28 MLAs, and the Congress, with 17, have a narrow majority, while the opposition People’s Democratic Party has 21, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which none of these three parties will ally with, has 11. To get a majority, even by say splitting the National Conference down the middle and allying with the PDP, Mir would have still needed the Congress — which means the army ought have been headed to 10, Janpath, not the agriculture minister’s lovely home in the mountain town of Tangmarg. But if it had 10, Janpath on its side, it wouldn’t need Mir — who has, not surprisingly flatly denied the allegations. Kashmir NGO Yes Kashmir, thirdly, is alleged to have received Rs 2.38 crore from VK Singh to file a human rights case against current army chief Bikram Singh, VK Singh’s successor. The money’s alleged recipient, Hakikat Singh, flatly denies he’s got anything to do with Yes Kashmir. In no case does the newspaper actually say what evidence the report has cited — so it’s hard to judge credibility. It’s worth noting, though, that the army’s proceedings are described as having been conducted by a Board of Officers led by Lieutenant-General Vinod Bhatia, the Director-General of Military Operations. This is not an instrument that can establish either institutional or individual culpability in wrong doing; a court of inquiry, a precursor to a court martial which could do that, hasn’t been instituted. The bottom line is this: the Army seems to have passed on some allegations, credible or otherwise, to the government. Those allegations might not be true. Then again, they might be true: Army headquarters has long been a snake-pit of ambitious generals, egged on by unscrupulous politicians. A “top PMO official” quoted by the Indian Express explains why it hasn’t ordered an investigaiton: “the problem confronting us while dealing with the TSD report has been two-fold. One, those running the TSD appear to have covered their tracks well and destroyed crucial evidence; two, the statements contained in the inquiry report have no legal sanction. In fact, if they are faced with a court martial or CBI inquiry, these officials can turn around and deny everything they have said”. How the PMO has arrived at these conclusions is not clear: it is not a criminal investigation agency, and can’t determine whether or not evidence has been destroyed or what witnesses might say. Either the investigation raises questions, in which case it must be taken further by police, or it doesn’t, in which case the government ought publicly bring down the curtain on this affair. It’s doing neither—and the only explanations for that are either incompetence, or plain, ugly malice.