The 13-page complaint filed by the CBI against author and retired army major General V K Singh, under the Official Secrets Act, charges him with making public “secret” and “top secret” information, projects, locations of installations and postings of officials of the Research and Analysis Wing.
In a day or two, the CBI is expected to file its chargesheet against Singh and his publisher V K Garg listing allegations similar to those in the complaint.
The complaint, accessed by The Indian Express, alleges that Singh “acquired knowledge and classified information” during his stint in R&AW, and then “indirectly not only passed on this information to our enemy countries but has alerted the bordering countries to take counter-measures and thus affected India’s diplomatic/ friendly relations with the bordering countries.”
The CBI claims that the plea taken by V K Singh during investigation that his aim was to expose corruption in the external intelligence agency was “not correct.” The concluding section in the complaint notes: “For exposing corruption, there was no need to divulge sensitive secret/top secret matters which have a bearing on the nation’s security...There are well laid down legal avenues available for ensuring action on any specific information about corruption which were not availed by Major General V K Singh.”
The CBI has listed 12 offending paragraphs (see Op-Ed page) of the book India’s External Intelligence — Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing, to build its case under the OSA. It has categorized the “offending” material into four lists:
... contd.