Army may court martial secret unit soldier

A soldier of the controversial military intelligence unit set up under former Army chief Gen V K Singh may face a court martial after a Court of Inquiry indicted him on charges of trying to share secret information with an unknown person.
The Army has told this to the Armed Forces Tribunal, which is hearing a case filed by Technical Support Division (TSD) Havildar Sham Das seeking bail after being under arrest for the past 20 months.
"The Court of Inquiry (CoI) has completed its proceedings and the competent authority has finalised the same and has directed disciplinary action against the applicant," the Army told the Tribunal.

The disciplinary action may lead to his court martial also, Army officials said.
The Army admitted that it had kept the soldier in its custody for over 20 months since June 8, 2012, but denied doing so "unauthorisedly".
The soldier filed a petition before the AFT contending that his arrest was "most wrongful and arbitrary" on basis of false allegations levelled against him by officials of Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI).

The Havildar claimed he is being "implicated" on the charge of sharing classified information with some unknown person who was source of the DRI.
The soldier has been facing a CoI since June 11 last year on charges of trying to sell classified information in a CD and a pen drive to some unknown person.

In his plea filed through his counsel Maj S S Pandey, the soldier claimed that he was put under close arrest with "sole aim of putting him under undue pressure to confess to such allegation which were totally wrong and also to implicate others in the process".
He claimed that during the CoI, it has come out that the CD was manipulated.