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HC clears all army officers
in the Samba spy case

Ordering the government to grant all consequential benefits to the officers who were dismissed from service, including the two captains convicted by the General Court Martial, a division bench comprising Justice Devinder Gupta and Justice K Ramamoorthy declared the orders against them as null and void in the absence of any evidence.

Accepting the writ petitions of Capt R S Rathore and Capt A K Rana and appeals of seven other officers against a single judge bench upholding the government action against them, the court said, "Their conviction is void in law."

Setting aside the GCM conviction and the army's dismissal order, the bench said the army authorities had failed to produce any material evidence of their alleged involvement in espionage.

The Samba spy case relates to the arrest of army personnel Sarwan Dass and Aya Singh in 1976 and their sentence to seven years imprisonment by the GCM. Subsequently, the two named Capt Rathore and Capt Rana, who were arrested in August 1978.

Following their interrogation by Military Intelligence, several army officers were arrested, seven of whom had moved the high court against their dismissal from service.

Castigating the army for 'roping in' so many officers in the case, the bench said, "We are of the view that there is no other conclusion possible except to say that the orders, which are subject matters of the writs and appeals by the petitioner, are merely camouflaged and passed for extraneous reasons under the cloak of innocuous form of orders of termination."

"To give an air of verisimilitude, the army had held court martial proceedings, which are wholly void," the court said in an 111-page judgement delivered after three years of arguments.

Stating that in the name of records, the army authorities had produced four 'thin files without paging' as evidence, the court said, "The respondents tried to play the cards very close to their chest, as it were, have not allowed any light being thrown on the issue to be decided."

Referring to the records produced by the army, the court said, "It does not disclose any fact. If any material worth mentioning have been found in the files, we would (have) not certainly interfered to annul the proceedings (of GCM)."

The seven army officers against whom a single judge bench had upheld the army's dismissal order are: R K Midha, M R Ajwani, S P Sharma (all in the rank of majors), Arun Sharma, Kulwant Singh, Vijay Kumar Dhawan and J S Yadav (all captains).

Military Intelligence had arrested 52 army personnel in the case but did not proceed against a few of them.

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