Under Army arrest for 16 months, TSD operative seeks bail

An Army jawan belonging to the controversial intelligence unit set up by Gen VK Singh has approached a military court for bail contending he has been under "illegal" arrest for the last 16 months on basis of "false" charges of trying to sell classified information.
Admitting the plea filed by Havildar Sham Das D, the Principal Bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal has asked the Army to file a reply in the matter.
Contending that his arrest from June 8 last year 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" in the charge of sharing classified information with some unknown person who was source of the DRI.

The jawan has been facing a Court of Inquiry (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 jawan 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.
"The DRI Official Assistant Director Rahul R who came to depose in the CoI not only refused to divulge the name of the source whom he had allegedly handed over the said CD, but abruptly left the CoI without signing his statement probably due to lack of any justification about the discrepancy in the CDs for which he had no answer and role of DRI officials was about to get exposed," he claimed.