25 yrs later, Samba spy case is thrown out

25 yrs later, Samba spy case is thrown out
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 21: The Delhi High Court today undid what it called ``the gross miscarriage of justice'' done by the Army to its officers in the Samba spy scandal which rocked the country in the two decades ago.

A bench, comprising Justice Devinder Gupta and Justice K. Ramamoorthy, exonerated two former captians, R S Rathaur and A K Rana, who had been court martialled by the Army, and quashed the Army orders dismissing seven other officers.

In a 111-page judgment delivered by Ramamoorthy, the court ruled that all these nine officers who had been detained for years on the charge of spying for Pakistan were now entitled to all the ``consequential benefits'' since the action taken by the Army against each of them was ``void in law.''

In a scathing indictment of the Army's functioning, the court said that Rathaur and Rana had been convicted in the court martial proceedings ``without a shred of evidence.'' Further, the court martial proceedings against the other seven officers were found to have been dropped midway as they ``were likely to be acquitted'' and instead they were dismissed from service ``without producing relevant record before the concerned authority.''

The court observed that the court martial proceedings were held only ``to give an air of verisimilitude'' and that the Army's orders were ``merely camouflage'' and had been passed for ``extraneous reasons.''

As a result, the Government and the Army ``failed miserably'' before the court ``to show that they had acted in accordance with law in initiating proceedings against the officers.'' The ``four thin files without paging'' produced as evidence by the Army prompted the judges to say ``the charge of espionage may be a serious one but that does not absolve the respondents from maintaining the records and showing the same to the court.''

Though the judiciary generally does not interfere with court martial proceedings, the Delhi high court clarified that it was entitled to annul the proceedings ``in case of gross miscarriage of justice.'' It added that it would not have intefered with the action taken in the Samba case ``if any material worth mentioning had been found in the files.''

The Army had contended that there could be no judicial review of its power to terminate the service of any of its personnel without any material on record. The court said: ``The whole premise is contrary to the basic structure of the Constitution. If all the documents had been produced and if they would show that the satisfaction was neither reached mala fide nor was it based on any extraneous or irrelevant grounds, we would not go into the question of expediency.'' Meaning, the court would not have interfered with the Army's actions if they were shown to have been taken on relevant considerations.

Bring the Army under the ambit of the general administrative law, the court said adding that the Military Intelligence Directorate, which had initiated the action against the officers, could not ``assume the role of a prosecutor and a judge in its own cause.''

The seven Army officers whose dismissal has been set aside are: R K Midha, M R Ajwani, S P Sharma (all in the rank of Majors), Arun Sharma, Kulwant Singh, Vijay Kumar Dhawan and J S Yadav (all captains).

The Military Intelligence Directorate had arrested 52 Army officers and personnel in the Samba case and some of them were, however, let off subsequently without any proceedings.