Bench also directed the army to produce all such documents by March 3. Brigadier Surinder Singh is the only Army officer of the Kargil War who was sacked without a general court martial (GCM) by the army.

When the matter came up for resumed hearing before division bench of the tribunal comprising Judicial member Justice NP Gupta and administrative member Lt Gen NS Brar on Monday, army counsel, who had specially came from Delhi informed that they cannot provide documents sought by the petitioner at present, as it will take some more time to procure all the documents.

However contesting their pleas, counsel for Brig Singh, advocate MP Goswami alleged that the army authorities are making mockery of system by making excuses, one after another and contradictory statements.

On Army’s claim of ‘confidentiality’ of documents, the lawyers pointed out that most of the portion of these documents have been published in various books written by General VP Malik, Captain Amrinder Singh and in Subramanyam committee report.

Importantly, it was for the third time that army authorities has failed to produce the documents. Surprisingly on earlier two occasions, Army tried to pass the bucks by terming the documents as ‘secret’ and ‘untraceable’.

Brigadier Surinder Singh

However on December 22 last year, counsel for the army authorities had promised to produce the sought documents by January 17. Brigadier Singh was the brigade commander of 121 Brigade, which looked after a border frontage of 160 km when the Kargil intrusion took place and is said to have informed his superiors about the increased threat perception across the LoC in Kargil in August 1998.

In his petition filed in 2001, Surinder Singh had prayed not only for professional restitution, but also for a complete investigation into the Kargil War, modelled on the Shimon Agranat Commission, which was set up after the Yom Kippur war between the Arabs and the Israelis. Early his petition was pending with the Delhi high court but after the constitution of Armed forces tribunal in Chandigarh, Singh got his case transferred here on the medical ground. Now the case would come up for further hearing on March 3.

-via The Times of India

Gen VK Singh

Army Chief General VK Singh on Thursday said the army is fully cooperating with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the Adarsh Housing Society scam in Mumbai.

“Whatever the CBI has done I am not aware of it, but whenever they want somebody we are giving them full support, whatever they want,” General Singh told reporters on the sidelines of a book release function here.

General Singh further said the Indian Army is ready to clarify its stand on irregularities pointed out by the state auditor in defence ration procurements by the Canteen Stores Department (CSD).

The CBI has claimed to have found evidence of alleged forgery and manipulation of documents on part of some army officers and bureaucrats in the scam.

CBI sources said that some of the documents seized by the investigating agency were indicative of some forgery having allegedly been committed by a few defence officials in criminal conspiracy with bureaucrats of Maharashtra government and private individuals.

A decision on registering the case under provisions of IPC and Prevention of Corruption Act would be taken once a clearance came from the legal department of the CBI.

Earlier on December 21, the Bombay High Court slammed the Maharashtra Government over the controversial Adarsh Housing Society scam saying it is ‘a clear-cut case of manipulation’ by its officers in which everybody who was supposed to clear the file was ‘gifted’ a flat.

The 31-storey Adarsh Society, originally meant for Kargil war heroes, landed in controversy after media reports said several politicians, bureaucrats and defence personnel owned flats there.

The CBI had on November 15 registered a Preliminary Enquiry (PE) to probe the alleged role of former and serving Army officers, with the permission of Defence Minister A K Antony.

-via Oneindia News

Brigadier Surinder Singh

Backtracking on its earlier submission before the Armed Forces Tribunal, the Army recently maintained that the reports and documents relating to the 1999 Kargil conflict were secret and hence could not be produced.

On October 25, when the case of Brigadier Surinder Singh had come up for hearing, the Army had stated that all documents were available and were in the custody of various units and locations and need some time to collect and present.

Brigadier Surinder Singh was commander of 121 Brigade at Kargil when the conflict broke out. The Army had declared him guilty of alleged lapses that led to the Kargil intrusion in his sector in 1999 which ultimately led to the Kargil War in which 527 Indian soldiers were killed. He was dismissed from the Army in 2001.

-via The Tribune, Chandigarh

Villain or hero? Now it will perhaps be more difficult than ever for Brigadier Surinder Singh to prove his innocence. The Army had declared him guilty of alleged lapses that led to the Kargil intrusion in his sector in 1999 which ultimately led to the Kargil War in which 527 Indian soldiers were killed. He was dismissed from the Army in 2001.

Brig Singh claims he is innocent. He had moved the armed forces tribunal against his dismissal demanding records of the correspondence that he says shows he had warned his bosses about the threat in his sector and also asked for more surveillance equipment to patrol the area. The court asked the Army to respond to his demand. But now in an affidavit, the Army has said the records in question have been destroyed by burning by a Board of Officers as some of it was confidential.

“Once those documents are brought before the court and to the nation, their lies will be nailed. They will be all exposed,” says Brigadier Singh.

If these documents were secret, then there was all the more reason for them to be kept safe, adds his lawyer MP Goswami. “They should not have been destroyed. Army has no authority to destroy secret documents nor does the government. These relate to operational matter of Kargil. They are part of Kargil history and war history of the nation.”

What is crucial now is whether the documents were destroyed before or after Surinder Singh asked for them. The Army has refused to respond to the question.

-via NDTV

Named: Ex Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor

Named: Ex Army Chief Gen N C Vij

Named: Ex Navy Chief Admiral Madhavendra Singh

“See the thing is that according to army’s law, inquiry has to be conducted. Because the case (Adarsh Housing Society scam) is with Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and when CBI hands over some inquiry details to us, then we will forward it,” General Singh told reporters.

“The internal inquiry is on, when internal inquiry will be over, then we can take action against those who will be found guilty,” he added, while highlighting the ongoing inquiry by the army.

Earlier in the day , Defence Minister A K Antony said the government and the armed forces will not spare any person, who is found guilty of wrongdoing in Mumbai’s Adarsh Housing Society scam.

The 31-storey Adarsh Society, originally meant for Kargil war heroes, landed in controversy after media reports stated that several high ranking army/navy officers, politicians and bureaucrats owned flats there.

The CBI had on November 15 registered a Preliminary Enquiry (PE) to probe the alleged role of former and serving Army officers, with the permission of Defence Minister A K Antony.

The plush housing Society, built on prime defence land, has been constructed in alleged violation of rules. It was originally meant to be a six-storey structure to house Kargil war heroes and their kin, but was later extended to 31 floors without mandatory permission.

-via India Talkies ]]> http://amandarivkin.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/fortnight-journal-the-k-word/ Sun, 12 Dec 2010 00:11:38 +0000 Amanda Rivkin http://amandarivkin.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/fortnight-journal-the-k-word/ The K-Word
Fortnight Journal
December 12, 2010

Recently, Indian novelist and Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy wrote in The New York Times op-ed page of “the subversive strength of warm, boiled eggs.” She was referencing the way her heart was won by the father of a young woman, Nilofar, in the Kashmiri village of Shopian. Nilofar was murdered earlier this year, allegedly by Indian security forces, in a disputed territory conflict with root causes extending as far back as the immediate post-Cold War period–if not as far back as the post-war Partition of India and Pakistan.

Arundhati Roy is among a select number of Indian intellectual critics of India’s ongoing policy and position on Kashmir. She has been the subject of mob retaliation orchestrated by the BJP (Hindu Nationalist Party) against her home, and there are calls for charges of treason against her. This, despite the issue of Kashmir obviously being a critical question at the core of the India-Pakistan dispute, and the ostensible reason for so much Pakistani attention to militant groups that engage India asymmetrically.

To date, Barack Obama has said the K-word only once; while campaigning for the presidency. As President, and manager of the spillover into Pakistan of the war in Afghanistan, Obama has yet to so much as mention Kashmir. This aversion is a bit like trying to bake a cake without an oven; ignoring a flashpoint of over six decades of India-Pakistan conflict will not work when one is convening both sides towards a resolution in congruent tribal areas with amorphous borders reigned over by Islamic-inspired militants. Thus is the critical ingredient to conflict analysis lacking–and the longer this neglected element sits in the sun, the more rotten it becomes.

Like several of my country’s foreign policy predicaments, however gingerly sidestepped, Kashmir is very much of our own making. In the 1980s, the U.S. funneled money, weapons and expertise to the mujahedin in Afghanistan through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). After the Soviet withdrawal, the U.S. wasted little time in ending its relationship with Pakistan, punishing it for nuclear ambitions with the Pressler Amendment in late 1990 that ended aid and assistance to the country for the next decade until September 11 laid out new geostrategic priorities for the United States.

Cut off and isolated, Pakistan cultivated rival nuclear programs and an international black market in blueprints under AQ Khan. Pakistan smuggled militants and weapons into Kashmir to challenge India repeatedly, most prominently during the Kargil War of 1999, where India and Pakistan were brought to the brink of nuclear war. Pakistan backed down when the U.S. sided with India. Rather than engage the question of Kashmir, then-President Clinton decided preserving the status quo was more important in balancing the two nuclear-armed rivals. “If the U.S. spent a small percent of the attention it pays to the Israel-Palestinian issue to Kashmir…” a familiar refrain by Nawaz Sharif went.

There has since been no challenge to the status quo on the Kashmir issue. Rather, a perpetual downward spiral unfurls as a civil society lives under curfew, threatened by a militant-infiltrated countryside that has pushed people towards the cities. Lawlessness abounds among ranks of both militants and the Indian military, the ostensible occupiers. The result is something worse than a stalemate; a nether-world, a mafia state – a place where criminal elements, drug traffickers, intelligence agents and armies can fight conventional and unconventional wars. The problem has festered even a decade after President Clinton called it “the most dangerous place on earth.”

And yet, Obama’s only effort to engage the issue has been an ill-fated proposition for Holbrooke’s pre-“AfPak” Envoy working title–Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Pakistan and India–until India objected its way out of the discussion, and then became furious about their exclusion.

Obama has another chance to engage the Kashmir issue constructively by inviting discussion in an international platform from Indian intellectuals with legitimacy on the international stage, such as Arundhati Roy, to raise conscientiousness of the issue. There is no reason not to engage a community within a country that can be far more effective in providing internal legitimacy to a presently unpopular position within high-ranking government circles for political and historic reasons. On a topic where there has been so little hope or progress made for well over a decade, any effort must be meticulous, but every effort is necessary to prevent the continuation of the world’s most dangerous game of Russian roulette. It might not end, but even de-escalation would represent a subtle reversal and perhaps provide enough room to give a generation of leaders in India, Pakistan and Kashmir the courage to come forward and see a day past curfew.

Indian officials have confirmed that former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been denied a visa. They did not give a reason.

Mr. Musharraf had been invited to speak at a seminar organized by business professionals in New Delhi.

Several of Mr. Musharraf’s supporters, who were planning to visit India with him, were also denied a visa. The former Pakistani military ruler, who lives in Britain, is attempting a political comeback and launched a political party in October.

Foreign affairs observers say that India wants to avoid providing a platform for Mr. Musharraf’s political ambitions, which they believe would be sending a wrong message to the civilian government in Islamabad.

“With Mr. Musharraf threatening to go back to Pakistan to start a political career, the Indian government is not very comfortable with helping him enlarge his political portfolio or image,” said Bharat Karnad, a strategic affairs analyst with the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

New Delhi has also been irked by Mr. Musharraf’s recent comments that India is responsible for creating unrest in Pakistan’s south-western Balochistan province, and that India is trying to create an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan.

Mr. Musharraf was army chief when India and Pakistan came close to a fourth war in 1999. Later, when he became Pakistan’s military ruler, the South Asian rivals embarked on a peace process which lowered tensions and led to a ceasefire along their tense Kashmir border.

That ceasefire is still holding. But the peace process remains stalled since the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, which India says were planned by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Karnad says New Delhi is unlikely to resume a full-fledged peace dialogue with its rival until its repeated calls to clamp down on groups directing terror at India are heeded.

“There has to be something on the ground is what Delhi wants by way of reassurance before it gets into thinking of resuming the composite dialogue,” added Karnad. “There is no give on Pakistan’s part, so there is unlikely to be any movement in Delhi.”

The top Indian demand is that Islamabad speed up the trial of the Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives it accuses of planning the Mumbai attacks.

Key papers pertaining to the scam-ridden Adarsh housing society are missing from the Urban Development Department in Mumbai, police said on Saturday. Police have registered a case of theft after a secretary of the department, Gurudas Bajpe, gave a written complaint to the Marine Drive police last night about the missing documents.

“We have registered a case against unknown persons. According to the UD department officials, several papers from the 10 files on Adarsh society were missing,” DCP Cherring Dorje said.

The disappearance of the papers was brought to the notice of CBI, which is investigating the multi-crore scam. “The department had submitted to us 10 files pertaining to Adarsh society. During perusal we realised that four noting papers were missing from the files. We brought this to the attention of the department,” a senior CBI official said.

The papers include the remarks of the state government officials and chief minister, the official said. “Investigations are on. We are questioning authorities of the Urban Development department,” Dorje said.

The Adarsh society, originally meant to be a six-storey structure to house Kargil war heroes and war widows, was converted into a 31-storey building, violating a number of laws. The flats were allotted to bureaucrats, politicians’ relatives and defence officers.

Why should we be ashamed and perhaps alarmed at this blatant attempt at grabbing prime property in Mumbai. After all,  we recently had the spectacle of Suresh Kalmadi and his gang along with the Delhi government authorities siphoning off billions, while organising the Common Wealth Games in Delhi, everyone knows that the real estate sector in India is perhaps the most corrupt and various bahubalis regularly grab land and buildings all over UP and Bihar, almost on a daily basis.

Well here are my reasons.

Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society involves politicians of all hues. Thus there are Shiv Sainiks, who were apparently in power in Mumbai, when the ball started rolling and then there are the Congressmen, the present chief minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan, who as revenue minister in the previous government, got the project cleared from the then chief minister, Vilas Rao Deshmukh (now a Union Cabinet Minister to boot). Thus this loot cuts across party lines and hence even the opposition isn’t baying for the chief minister’s blood. Thus this is a unique collaboration between politicians, army-men and civil servants who have all joined hands to make a mockery of our trust.

Most alarming is the involvement of army generals, two of them are former Chiefs of Army and one an Admiral of the Indian Navy. So far most people believed that the Indian army as an institution is largely incorruptible and that honour amongst army-men runs high. Apparently, this is a myth. Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society was meant to offer subsidised housing to the families of the martyrs and the brave soldiers of the Kargil war. None of the intended beneficiaries even knew of these apartments, while the army brass managed to lay their hands on them without much trouble. Sadly, these are the men, who till not so long ago led more than a million men in uniform, commanded vast national resources and were responsible for the security of our great nation. They presumably bought armaments worth billions from vendors across the globe. If they could be swayed so easily, lured by an apartment in Mumbai, imagine what else might be underway in the shadowy corridors of the ministry of defense. Imagine how deep (or should I say high) the rot runs in the hallowed institutions of the Indian Army and Navy. While, one has come to expect the worst from our politicians (whether, Ashok Chavan, Suresh Prabhu, Vilas Rao Deshmukh, Suresh Kalmadi or A Raja), to expect the same from the Generals of the armed forces is truly shocking.

To make matters worse, life goes on as usual for everyone in Mumbai. The Congress Party is hard pressed to find a replacement for the tainted chief minister, the opposition parties are quiescent, the generals are retired and at home, the bureaucrats continue to serve their political masters, the CBI has commenced its never-ending investigations and ordinary people like you and me go about our lives without much thought to the cancer of corruption, which keeps growing everyday.

In the late 1980′s Rajeev Gandhi lost power, when his name cropped up as a possible beneficiary of a pay-off from Bofors, the Swedish arms manufacturer. The deal was all of Rs. 62 Cr. Today hardly any eyebrows are raised, even when a few thousand crores of public money is swindled by venal politicians (and now by army generals as well), whom we religiously elect every 5 years.

This is how far we have come down this slippery road.

Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan has sought information on the row over the allotment of a prime plot of land to Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society in south Mumbai. Chavan has asked concerned departments to submit the information, an official said, adding “as per our records, the land
belongs to the revenue department and was in the possession of the Union ministry of defence”.

The army is also carrying out an inquiry into the row.

The highrise building has been allegedly constructed by violating rules, with beneficiaries being former services chiefs, politicians and bureaucrats.

A controversy has erupted over how the Adarsh society in Colaba, originally meant to be a six-storey structure to house Kargil war heroes and widows, got converted into a 31-storey tower through collusion of bureaucrats, politicians and top defence officers.

The highrise is built on 6,450 sq metres within the Colaba naval area and was cleared on the condition of housing war veterans but now has 104 members including senior army commanders, a former environment minister, legislators and state bureaucrats.

Chavan has asked the concerned departments to submit a comprehensive report on the allegations and once the information is received, he will decide on the course of action, the official said.

The Hindu records:

The Navy has objected to Maharashtra government according permission for Occupation Certificate citing serious security concerns.

The 100-metre tall building next to a planned helipad and military installations has violated the CRZ limit of a height of 30 metres, the Navy had said.

A case of inter-services rivalry?

Oct 29

A head seems to be about to roll: the head of Maharashtra, according to ET:

Amid indications that his continuance in office may be untenable, Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan has been summoned to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi here tomorrow.
…
The decision to summon Chavan to the Capital for a meeting with the Congress Chief comes despite his announcement only a few hours earlier that flats alloted to his mother-in-law and two other relatives were being surrendered. This has obviously not impressed the party leadership.

Highly placed sources said tonight that Chavan, who became chief minister a year ago, is likely to be asked to step down in the wake of the Adarsh Housing scam.

Chavan had been involved in clearing papers for the upscale high-rise Adarsh building project in his previous capacity as the Revenue minister.

Two years ago, the Indian Army, through a Court of Inquiry, had known that 72 officers including a serving Colonel and three Lt Colonels, posted in sensitive border districts of Rajasthan and in Bhutan had sold away their Service and Non-Service guns of both prohibited and non-prohibited bore to undisclosed private persons in blatant violation of the Army Act as well as the Customs Act. But instead of punishing them, the Court of Inquiry report was buried under the carpet.

An Army affidavit submitted before a Bench comprising Justices B Sudershan Reddy and S S Nijjar, following interim orders in a PIL, vomits the name of these officers confessing therein that from amongst the officers involved in the racket Col Neeraj Rana has sold away 5 numbers of weapons of Army Officers, Lt Col V S Rathore has sold away 17 weapons of Army officers including his own weapon, Lt Col S S Rathore has sold away 5 weapons of Army officers including his own and Lt Col B S Shekhawat has sold away 11 weapons of Army officers.

While admitting the offense against the country in the instant case, the Army has revealed, “Forty-five officers and one JCO had sold away their non-service-pattern (NSP) weapons without taking sanction of competent authority in violation of SAO 1/S/96 and the Arms Act, 1959. Of these, 10 officers have since retired.”

Out of the 35 in-service officers only four officers have retrieved their guns and reported to Central Ordnance Depot, Jabalpur for further action whereas the rest 31 racketeers have not yet buzzed.

It is a shame that the Army has not yet dared to subject these uniformed racketeers to disciplinary action despite knowing their crime since two years, through its own Court of Inquiry.

It is more shameful that information on this illegal gun selling by Army Officers was not being released even under the RTI Act. Had the Supreme Court not acted on a PIL, this information could never have come on public records and no action could ever have been possible against these racketeers.

But we suspect, had there been no Kargil war, Army Officers would not have dared to indulge in such naked crime against the country.

Swindling of public funds in the guise of defense expenditure was the industry that Vajpayee government was running under the cover of Kargil war, as even the CAG reports have shown.

George Fernandes’ resignation in March 2001 following Tehelka exposures on defense deals and his subsequent appointment as monitor of administration as NDA convener and eventual reinduction into the same post of Defence Minister in October 2001 after his supporters threatened to expose the PM following his resignation, makes many wonder as yet as to what secrecy of Vajpayee was known to Fernandes that had helped him thus, despite Opposition boycott to him till the last in the parliament! Was this secrecy connected with the Cargil war?

Had there been no Kargil war Vajpayee could never have returned to power. Was this war then willfully created? Was it the secrecy shared between Fernandes and Vajpayee? Had Vajpayee succumbed to his blackmail and reinduced him as the defense minister to keep his mouth shut? The real reason of Vajpayee’s shameless maintenance of Fernandes as defense Minister in total disregard to authentic reports of audit and intelligence over and above Opposition boycott against him, are yet to be investigated into in interest of the country and its democracy.

Fortunately for India, the Kargil war is facing trial in the Supreme Court in the matter of fudging of the “battle performance report”.

The Armed Forces Tribunal has reportedly indicted the former head of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps, Lt. Gen. Kishan Pal (Retd), for his biased confidential report on Brig. Devinder Singh, the then head of the 70 Infantry Brigade (Retd) in the context of the Kargil operations and has ordered that the same be expunged. This has given birth to the case before the Supreme Court, even as Pal has denied any bias against Singh.

We have discussed the issue of Kargil war under the caption, VAJPAYEE BE ENQUIRED INTO IN CONTEXT OF FERNANDES, in these pages on 13 October 2006.

We stress upon that article. We urge upon our readers to go through that article again and to form their own opinion and to join us on the demand we have raised therein, if they agree with what we have said in that article.

To us, Kargil war has corrupted our defense system. Were the defense personnel not be knowing that Kargil was a fake war, so many officers could never have dared to violate the Army Act in selling away their and others’ official weapons in so massive numbers and knowing of the same as far as two years ago, the Army authorities could not have kept quite while allowing the same officers to continue in service.

The Supreme Court, while dealing with the case mentioned supra, should try to see if the Kargil war was entirely fake, so that the climate created by Vajpayee and Fernandes that has encouraged defense officials to act against the country sans qualms could come to an end after due exposure.

The Tribunal rejected a review petition against its May 27 order in which the Army was directed to correct the records of the Kargil conflict following contention by Singh that the battle accounts were fudged by his superior Lt Gen Kishan Pal.

Taking a serious view of the review petition, Tribunal chairperson Justice A K Mathur said the Army should be “thankful” as the previous verdict could have been “worse” as decorations of Lt Gen Kishan Pal could have also been withdrawn.

In its May 27 order, the Tribunal had asked the army to expunge Singh’s Annual Confidential Report(ACR) written by Lt Gen Pal and directed it to correct certain records of the Kargil conflict.

Singh had moved the Delhi high court in 2006, complaining that his role as leader of the 70 Infantry Brigade in the Batalik Sector had been underplayed and this had cost him a war medal and promotions.

The Tribunal had accepted his contention that his contribution had been incorrectly represented by Lt Gen Kishan Pal and held that “the ACRs were not written in an objective and unbiased manner”.

In view of the adverse ACR by Lt Gen Pal, Brigadier Singh could not be promoted to the rank of major general.

Among the records which the Tribunal had wanted to be corrected was a paragraph in the After Action Report of the war and two other paragraphs of the Kargil war account.

After the army filed the review petition, Singh had also filed a plea seeking changes in the Kargil Review Committee report to absolve him and his unit of the “blame” for intrusion by Pakistani Army into Indian territory before the war started.

-via DNA.

Sarkar, a retired Major of the Indian Army who participated in the Kargil conflict, succumbed to his injuries in hospital, a police official said.

South 24 Parganas Additional Superintendent of Police (Industrial) Sunil Kumar Chowdhury said: “We were informed that Sarkar was lynched by the locals. His body has been sent for autopsy.”

“On Friday morning, he went out of the house without informing us and later we were informed that he has been beaten to death,” Sarkar’s sister said.

The police has started an investigation but no one has been arrested so far.

-via Hindustan Times.

These South Asian rivals have fought each other four times since their independence from British rule in 1947, most recently in May 1999 following the infiltration by Pakistani forces of Indian Territory around the town of Kargil in the disputed northern province of Kashmir. By June, India had repulsed the infiltration, although an uneasy peace existed between the two nations.

Two months after the war’s end, tensions remained high. Disaster struck on 10th August 1999, when Atlantique No. 33 of the Pakistan Navy’s 29 Squadron made a normal departure at 09.15 Pakistan Time (Greenwich Mean Time/GMT +5) from Karachi. Once airborne, the Atlantique was tracked by Indian Air Force ground radar with the aircraft reportedly flying close to the international border between the two countries.

Two Indian Air Force MiG-21bis (NATO reporting name ‘Fishded-N’) combat aircraft were scrambled to intercept the Atlantique. Exactly what happened for the next two hours remains a mystery. Established facts say that the Atlantique was engaged at 11.17 Indian Standard Time (GMT +5.30) by a Vympel R-60 (NATO reporting name ‘AA-8 Aphid’) infra-red guided air-to-air missile, which was fired by one of the MiG-21s. The missile hit the Atlantique’s port engine making the aircraft loose control and hit marsh land in the Great Ran of Kutch; an area which had been the scene of another territorial dispute between the two countries. All 16 crew members on board the Atlantique were killed.

Claims and counter-claims regarding the so-called ‘Atlantique Incident’ have raged since the shoot down. The Pakistani government argued that the aircraft’s wreckage had been found on its side of the border, inferring that the plane was shot down when still flying in Pakistani airspace; adding that the aircraft had been performing a training flight at the time, and not an offensive mission.

The Indian Air Force retorted that the aircraft had violated its airspace and an agreement signed by India and Pakistan in 1991, which stated that military aircraft of either nation were not permitted to fly within 5.4 nautical miles of their mutual international border. Moreover, India raised questions as to why a training mission was being performed so close to a sensitive international border.

So what mission was the Atlantique performing on that fateful day? As noted above, the Pakistan government argued that the aircraft was flying nothing more sinister than a training mission. However, allegations have been made that the Atlantique may have been testing the response times of the Indian Air Force’s air defence network, by flying provocatively towards the border, and monitoring the reaction times and radar frequencies used by Indian air defence radar and fighters. This is a standard procedure for identifying weak points in a nation’s air defence system through which it may be possible for strike packages of aircraft to ingress relatively unseen during any future conflict.

We will probably never know for certain the mission that Atlantique No.33 was performing that fateful day. However, during the course of some unconnected research, the author stumbled upon an interesting piece of information. In 1993, Pakistan’s Atlantiques were outfitted with a piece of equipment known as a DR-3000A Electronic Support Measure. The DR-3000A was a product made by Thomson-CSF (now Thales) in France and designed to collect information regarding radar. Principally it listens for radar operating in the eight-to-twelve gigahertz frequency range, known as the X-band, which is popularly used for naval surveillance, air surveillance and fighter surveillance radar. By using the DR-3000A it would be possible to gather information regarding the characteristics and behaviour of any radar operating across these frequencies, affording important electronic intelligence, especially if somebody was keen to learn how to use electronic warfare to jam these radar.

Although nobody is claiming that Pakistan’s Atlantique was performing a Signals Intelligence mission on the day it was shot down, the presence of an aircraft with a SIGINT capability near such a sensitive area certainly does raise some interesting questions.

By Thomas Whithington

NDTV editor and star-anchor Barkha Dutt in a 2008 war comic on the saga of Captain Vikram Batra, a young officer of the 13th battalion of the J&K rifles regiment of the Indian army, who was martyred during the Kargil war. The artist is Pradeep Yadav.