Army rapped for not shifting tainted officer

The letter also conveys Defence Minister A K Antony’s directions that all cases of corruption and malpractice in the Army should be “dealt with firmly” and any laxity would damage the reputation of the Armed Forces.

Taking strong exception,the Defence Ministry has rubbished as “spurious” the Army’s claims for not transferring the officer and has asked the HQ to fix responsibility for the failure to shift the officer to a less sensitive post.

“The argument that it is not a practice to change the posting of an officer on imposition of a DV ban is spurious because the conduct of a CBI raid on an officer of the rank of Maj-Gen is not a usual occurrence and therefore past practice cannot be a guide,” the letter says.

It may be recalled that the Delhi High Court ordered the promotion of the officer in October this year and had penalised the Army for blocking his promotion on invalid grounds.

One of the key observations made by the Bench while ordering the promotion was that even after the raid,Maj-Gen Kapur continued to occupy the post of Major-General Army Ordnance Corps (MGAOC),HQ,South Western Command,Jaipur and dealt with purchases,thus he was “found fit to perform important duties dealing with financial ramifications and yet promotion has been denied to him”.

Days after the court verdict,the officer was chargesheeted by the CBI in a disproportionate assets case,thus blocking his promotion to the rank of Lt-Gen.

The Defence Ministry wrote to the Army HQ again after no action was taken on an earlier letter asking the Army to “fix responsibility for not having shifted the officer to a non-sensitive position even after imposition of DV ban”.