AT last the Chief of the Army Staff, General Deepak Kapoor, did order that the Military Secretary at the Army Headquarters, Lieutenant-General Avdesh Prakash, generally perceived to be a favourite of the Army Chief, should face a court-martial in the notorious Sukna land scam, involving four very senior Army officers. Left to himself Gen Kapoor, would not have done so.

 His inclination was to let Lt-Gen Prakash to get away with mere ‘administration action’, which would have been little more than a knock on the wrist. But, Mr A K Antony’s directive, euphemistically called ‘advice’ to him to treat Lt-Gen Prakash no differently than Lt-Gen P K Rath, former GOC of the 33 Corps, in whose case the Army Chief had recommended a court-martial. Also allegedly involved in the land scam were another Lt-Gen and a major-general. Yet it is noteworthy that Gen Kapoor carried out the Defence Minister’s order literally at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute, just 48 hours before the Military Secretary would have retired. Earlier on January 30, when Army Headquarters would have shut down for Beating Retreat and the weekend, Army sources were reported as having said that the Army Chief was ‘studying’ the Defence Minister’s advice, whatever that might mean.
Court Martial: It was only when the Ministry of Defence received Gen Kapoor’s recommendation–that only Lt-Gen P K Rath, the Commander of the 33 Corps, should face a court martial, while there should be much milder ‘administrative action’ against Lt-Gen Prakash, Lt-Gen Halgali, a former chief of staff, 33 Corps, and Major-General P Sen, administrative head of the corps–that Mr Antony found it necessary to intervene and virtually order that Lt-Gen Prakash to be fair and just.       
Quite a few old-timers of the Indian Army said since then that the ministerial action was path breaking and the first of its kind in the Army’s long history. Remarkably most, though not all, of them also agreed that the Antony directive was both necessary and timely. The minority view was that the Army should have been left free to decide the matter according to its own set of rules of justice under the Army Act. However, merely to state the facts of the case is to demonstrate that the Defence Minister was not only within his rights to intervene but also was profoundly right. There are two other firsts about this episode: First, never before an officer of Lt-Gen (now retired) Prakash’s seniority faced such an action. Secondly, it is the first known occasion when two lieutenant-generals are being court martialed.  
The Sukna Case: Mr Antony may not have displayed great grasp of the problems of Indian defence but there has been never any doubt about his unyielding insistence on probity and transparency in all matters even if this has often delayed the procurements the military urgently needs. He wants justice not only to be done but also seen to be done. By any reckoning this surely hadn’t happened in the Sukna case for as long as the Army Chief had handled or rather mishandled it.
Sukna near Darjeeling is a Military Station under the Army’s 33 Corps. When it first became known that the Corps Commander, Lt-Gen Rath–allegedly at the goading of Lt-Gen Prakash and while keeping his superior, Lt-Gen V K Singh, GOC-in-Chief, Eastern Command and now COAS-designate, completely in the dark–had promoted the vested interests of a real estate builder, Gen Singh immediately appointed a Court of Inquiry. Lt-Gen Prakash and Rath, it transpired had helped the builder, Dileep Agarwal, to secure from the 33 Corps a No Objection Certificate for his project to set up an ‘educational institution’ on a 70-acre plot adjacent to military land. The builder had claimed that his institution would be affiliated to the famed Mayo College at Ajmer. On learning this, the Mayo authorities contradicted Agarwal’s claim.
The Court of Inquiry, appointed by the Eastern Army Commander, indicted 3 Lt-Generals, including Prakash, Rath, and Halgali and Major-General Sen, for wrong-doing. It also drew attention to Lt-Gen Prakash’s alleged association over a long period with Agarwal. On receipt of the Court of Inquiry’s report, the Eastern Army Commander recommended strong disciplinary action against Lt-Gen Prakash as also others. Furthermore, he cancelled the NOC issued to Agarwal before it could reach the West Bengal government headquarters at Writers’ Building in Kolkata. By the time the file reached the Army Chief for decision, the widespread impression within and without the Army circles was two-fold: first that there was tension between the Army Chief and the Eastern Army Commander who would succeed General Kapoor on March 31; and secondly General Prakash was a protégé of the Army Chief and was therefore being ‘shielded’.
This, if accurate, can explain what followed. Since by that time the contents of the inquiry report and the Eastern Army Commander’s recommendations had become known to the media, it went to town and demanded of Gen Kapoor what he proposed to do about the ‘guilty men’. His rather angry response was that neither he nor the media should reach a ‘premature’ judgment on the matter. Thereafter he dragged his feet about coming to a decision. He even gave Lt-Gen Prakash 10 days’ leave to avoid the embarrassment of his presence at the Army Day and the Republic Day parades and then gave the beleagured aide show cause notice in such a way that the answer to it would come just a few days before Lt-Gen Prakash’s retirement. But for the Defence Minister’s intervention the Army Chief’s wholly flawed decision might have prevailed.
Scams Galore: This said I must rush to add that the Army is arguably the country’s finest institution that has defended the country’s freedom and frontiers splendidly. Compared with other institutions that form the republic’s infrastructure, it is more disciplined and efficient. Its ethos needs to be preserved and promoted and no one, whether civilian or military, has any business to sully its image. But how can the ethos and shining reputation of the Army be preserved when the misdeeds of some its own dent its image? The shameful Sukna affair has come in the wake of several other scams, including the one in which the brave defenders of Siachen were sent drums full of water instead of petrol. A major-general had to be sacked for selling away the liquor meant for the army formations. There is also the case of ‘ketchup colonels’ who, to get rapid promotions, faked photographs of militants they were supposed to have killed.  The Sukna scam is unspeakably disgraceful. Land grab is currently the most lucrative pastime of those in power and other crooks. It is bad enough when corrupt politicians and bureaucrats indulge in it. But when generals join the loot, God help us. By mishandling such a scandal Gen Kapoor has neither covered himself with glory nor enhanced the army’s reputation. The Army needs better leadership.