Technical services divison: Army orders summary of evidence against former CO of covert unit

The setting up of a fresh “summary of evidence” comes about four months after a 10-year jail term was pronounced against Sham Das D, the TSD clerk who was arrested in Kerala in 2012.

A three-year-old espionage case involving the Technical Services Division (TSD) — the now-disbanded covert operations unit of the Army — has taken a fresh turn with orders being passed for the unit’s commanding officer, Colonel Hunny Bakshi, to be attached to Nabha for a “summary of evidence” against him.

The order was signed on October 12. Nabha is the headquarters of the Army’s Ist Armoured Division in Patiala. The setting up of a fresh “summary of evidence” comes about four months after a 10-year jail term was pronounced against Sham Das D, the TSD clerk who was arrested in Kerala in 2012.

The move comes almost two years after the recommendation, in November 2013, that “suitable disciplinary action” should be taken against the commanding officer also.

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The TSD — which was established during the tenure of then Army Chief General V K Singh — has been the subject of several controversies. After Singh’s retirement, the Army had disbanded the unit in August 2012, after which an inquiry was set up under Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia.

The inquiry report has not been made public, though it is understood to have asked for an independent agency to investigate the TSD’s functioning and alleged misuse of secret service funds.

The 35-odd personnel manning the TSD were transferred out. It was Bakshi who took the unusual step of writing to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar with an appeal that the proceedings of the GCM and all documents pertaining to the TSD be kept secret in view of the sensitivity and built-in “deniability” of its operations.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More

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