Indian Army holds up declassification of Henderson Brooks report

1962 Indo-China war 50th anniversary

Army holds up declassification of the Henderson-Brooks Bhagat report

Sandeep Unnithan  New Delhi, October 18, 2012 | UPDATED 12:51 IST

The Indian army has held up the declassification of one of India's most classified documents, the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report. The report submitted by Lieutenant General Henderson Brooks and then Brigadier Prem Bhagat to the government in 1963 outlines the reasons for the defeat of the Indian army in the 1962 border war with China.

Senior government officials told India Today that the army has steadfastly maintained releasing the report was 'bad for morale'. Officials who have read it say this is because the report squarely indicts senior army generals for the country's worst-ever military defeat. Over 2000 officers and soldiers died and hundreds taken prisoners when the Chinese simultaneously attacked Indian positions in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh in October 20, 1962.

On 20th October 1962, a Bell 47G was lost on the Tsangdhar ridge. Pilot was Sqn Ldr Vinod Kumar Sehgal with Major Ram Singh as crew. The helicopter was on a rescue mission. The wreckage was captured by PRC forces.

The crux of the report in a 40-page summary by General Chaudhary says the army gave a better account of itself in the Ladakh sector by resisting the Chinese advance, because of better leadership. The three main findings of the report are the failure of the army's higher command, the organization of the army and finally the events leading to the appointment of the glib but militarily unsound corps commander Lt General Brijmohan Kaul and his disastrous handling of the defences of north-eastern India. 

The report blames the army's defeat in the north-east in the North East Frontier Agency (present Arunachal Pradesh) on the higher echelons of the Indian army. It explains why an entire division comprising over 15,000 soldiers, the 4th Infantry Division, collapsed in disarray and retreated from its headquarters at Tawang; an infantry Brigade of over 3000 soldiers was overrun by the Chinese and the Brigadier and several officers taken prisoner in NEFA.

(Nov 1962) A Dakota air drops supplies in Assam. Indian lines were highly inaccessible by road and hence difficult to supply.

General Brooks lays the blame for these debacles in the North East on the frequent changes in command. The responsibility for defending NEFA was taken away from the less-pliant Lt General Umrao Singh who commanded the Siliguri-based 33 Corps. 

A new Tezpur-based 4 Corps was created and Lt General Kaul, then Chief of General Staff in army headquarters, appointed to head it. Kaul fell sick just before the conflict started but clung to his command and issued instructions from his official residence 5 York Road (now 5 Motilal Nehru Marg, the house of the Vice Chief of the IAF, in Delhi). 

The other officer in the report's line of fire: Brigadier DK Palit, the Director Military Operations, an acolyte of General Kaul who tried to micro-manage the conduct of the war from DGMO, New Delhi.

Only two copies of the report exist : one copy in the office of the defence secretary on the first floor of South Block; the other in a vault within the Directorate General of Military Operations (DGMO) on the same floor.

Lieutenant General Brooks states in his preface that he has specifically been directed not to look at the political events in the run up to the war. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is not mentioned but his appointee, defence minister V Krishna Menon is implicated in the report. Menon played favorites in the army, he propped one officer up against another. 

Officials who have read the report are struck by its lucidity, "Very frank and straight, not double-guessing what the bosses want to hear", says one official. There is anguish over the catastrophic debacle.

The report is a total of 28 volumes. Four volumes contain the actual report, hand-typed in thin fool-scap sheets; the maps and military communications-practically every single order of importance issued during the war-- form another 24 annexures bound with string and stored horizontally in a large maroon envelope. 

The paper is now faded and yellowing 'like butterfly wings' says an official who has read it, but the contents are as devastating today as they were when it was submitted to then Indian army chief General JN Chaudhary in 1963. General Chaudhary replaced General VN Thapar who resigned a day after the ceasefire in November 22, 1962.

Brigadier (later Lt General) Prem Bhagat passed away in 1975 and Lt General Brooks in June 1999 in Australia to where he had emigrated after his retirement from the army. All the main protagonists they named in the report are dead. 

Over the years, however, the report with its clinical analysis of the conflict, has descended deeper into a well of secrecy. The report is part of a list of secret documents handed over by one defence secretary to the next; in the DGMO, it is held by Director- MO 1, a Colonel who heads the China division. This tradition has continued for nearly five decades. It has never been copied or taken out of South Block. 

Army personnel who read it have to seek clearance at the highest levels. A hand-written register maintains the list of all persons who have accessed it. Successive governments have rebuffed numerous attempts made to get the report declassified. In response to India Today's January 1, 2008 application for the report, army headquarters said it could not be revealed because it is 'a Top Secret document vital to the security interest of the State.'

Veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar says he insisted the NDA government release the report during his six-year stint as a Rajya Sabha MP. "The refusals (from the government) were firm and consistent," he wrote in 2003 in a newspaper column. Then defence minister George Fernandes said it was "not in the public interest" to reveal the document. 

Fernandes first agreed to table the report before parliament, but did not do so.  In response to a question, Defence Minister AK Antony told parliament in 2008 that the contents of the report were part of an 'internal study report' and that it was "not only extremely sensitive but of current operational value."

In 2005, Nayar tried to get the report under under the Right to Information Act. Sometime in 2006, then Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, whose father had served as a General in the army, visited South Block on a quiet Sunday and read one of the two copies of the report. The CIC would decide, after reading the report, whether it could be put out in the public domain. Habibullah later told a friend that he was extremely disturbed by the contents. 

It had named several army officers down the chain of command. In March 2010, the government had its way. The CIC ruled that 'no part of the Henderson Brooks report might at this stage be disclosed'. Author and historian Claude Arpi author of 'The McMahon Line Saga' suggests the real reason the report is not being declassified lies in a mistake made by the Indian army.

"The army established posts on the Thagla Ridge and the Namka Chu despite them being in an undemarcated area. Some Indian maps even showed these areas as lying within Chinese-occupied Tibet but the army went ahead and established these posts. The names of the culprits are known but will probably remain a State secret for years to come," he says.

It is not just the Henderson-Brooks report. The MoD has also been sitting on the Himmatsinghji Committee report that was submitted in 1951. The report chaired by Major General MS Himmatsinghji, deputy defence minister, was set up by the union government. It recommended strengthening India's border defences with Tibet following the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Responding to a petition from a research scholar Anit Mukherjee in November 2011, the MoD said the report was 'not available'. Anything to do with the China war, it seems, is beyond scrutiny.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/army-holds-up-declassification-of-the-henderson-brooks-bhagat-report/1/225260.html

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October 15, 2012

Armed and dangerous in ceasefire country

North-East rebel groups freely brandish arms, extort protection money from locals and run parallel governments

S andeep Unnithan and Kaushik Deka and Imphal  October 5, 2012 | UPDATED 12:45 IST

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The serpentine road leads to a 'designated camp' at Khehoi, 18 km from Nagaland's commercial capital, Dimapur. A checkpost is manned by unsmiling sentries slinging ak-47s and wearing mottled emerald-black fatigues. On the hilltop, 'Colonel' Ahito, 49, a stocky potbellied rebel, beard touching his chest and arms covered with tattoos of clenched dagger-wielding fists, grins as he welcomes you to the military headquarters of the Khole-Kitovi faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN).

Khehoi has close to 100 Naga fighters armed with ak-47s, M16s, rocket-propelled grenades and light machine guns. Women guerrillas sport make-up, nail polish and cradle M16 assault rifles. The insurgents are housed in military-style barracks spread over 100 acres of state government land. They rise at 3.30 a.m. every day and are in bed by 8 p.m.; their waking hours are spent in training and waiting for peace talks with the Government to begin. Khehoi is one of 63 'designated camps' set up since 1997 by the Union home ministry and state governments across the four insurgency-hit states of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland. The layout of the designated camps is near-identical: They are housed on state-owned land, far from human settlements. The insurgents can keep their weapons for self-protection but cannot leave the camps.

Kuki national organisation fighters at a designated camp in the Sadar Hills, 33 km East of Imphal.

The concept originated after cadres of the now-defunct Naga Socialist Council walked into government-designated camps in 1964. The truce lasted only three years but the idea of a half-way house endured. "Dialogue takes time. The Government can't let the rebel groups roam free till talks conclude. So the Government introduced the idea of camps, where the cadres are kept isolated and under observation," says R.N. Ravi, former special director, Intelligence Bureau.

But when India Today travelled to camps across Assam, Nagaland and Manipur, it found the so-called ceasefire with rebel groups had all but collapsed. The shooting had stopped, but the rebels freely brandish arms, extort money from locals in the guise of tax, indulge in dacoity and worse, sell weapons to fuel conflict elsewhere in the country. "This is the price we have paid for peace," says a senior Army official of the Kolkata-based Eastern Command.

Indeed, Assam home ministry officials say cbi has found evidence that the insurgents who killed 86 people in Kokrajhar between July and August belonged to 'designated' camps in Serfanguri, Borbori and Udalguri.

In Manipur, the Centre spent Rs 7.2 crore to construct a dozen camps to house Kuki rebels, who announced a ceasefire in 2005. One of them, Sinai, is located 33 km from the state capital Imphal. Both the state and Central governments claimed to have spent Rs 60 lakh on the camp. The road, however, vanishes into a dirt trail 7 km from the hilltop camp. Inside the 10-acre camp, 40 Kuki fighters are crammed into two shabby, 10x50 ft halls. Ceasefire rules confine cadres to camps so they while away their time playing volleyball, listening to music on their mobile phones and watching TV when there is electricity. All the insurgents are school dropouts and frustrated that a seven-year ceasefire has not yielded a future. The monthly stipend of Rs 3,000 paid by the state government is not enough. "I want a final decision. Either we go back to the jungle or the Government increases our salary. We can't manage on Rs 3,000 in the camp," says 23-year-old T. Thangboy, alias Danger, drawing on his Myanmar-made Win cigarette.

Kuki national organisation fighters relax at their designated camp in the Sadar hills.

"We don't know what to do," says Ngamesh Haokip, 31. "It's impossible to stay in the camps all the time. So we go out." He, however, has been unable to meet his wife and four children, who stay 180 km away. His stipend only allows for a meal of rice and lentils. "We often go to our relatives in neighbouring villages for food," says 15-year-old John Kuki, who shares his bed with a friend in a dingy room partitioned by a thick curtain. Three more beds accommodate six guerrillas, their weapons lying next to them. A steel trunk stores clothes and other essentials. Meals are cooked on firewood ovens in the open, and served in aluminium plates and leaves of trees. The camp commander and his lieutenant, however, have rooms with attached baths, water dispensers, emergency lights, tables and steel cupboards.

In Assam, the ULFA camp at Kakopathar in Tinsukia district is spread over 1.5 acres. Sixteen insurgents stay here with their wives. There is separate accommodation for the couples and 17 children. Sofas welcome guests, there is a recreational hall with TV set and carrom boards, and almost all the rooms have satellite connections. Anamika Moran, a Class VII student in Rupai Jatiya Vidyalaya and daughter of an ULFA 'second lieutenant', represents Assam in handball tournaments. A woman trained in weaving at the State Institute for Rural Development has stayed in the camp for last two months to teach the wives of the insurgents. "I've organised this so that the wives can make a living out of weaving, even if something untoward happens to their husbands," says ULFA leader Jiten Dutta.

The insurgents inhabit a strange no-man's land. Technically, they are still at war with the state because they haven't surrendered and hence cannot work elsewhere. Some have tried their hand at raising poultry and farming in the camps, but a vast majority are jobless and depend on government dole.

The Assam government spends Rs 1.5 crore each month paying stipends to 5,000 rebels who have stopped fighting. There is a cruel twist in their plight. Government officials admit to a collusion between Special Branch police officers and rebel leaders. This nexus siphons money from the amount that the government pays insurgents. Raju Minz, 34, an ULFA insurgent staying in the Kakopathar camp with his wife Dulumoni, says he has received Rs 6,000 from the government only once this year. This despite Assam Home Secretary G.D. Tripathi's insistence that the government has begun handing cheques directly to the insurgents. It's not difficult to see where the money has gone.

Leaders of these militant groups live well. Mrinal Hazarika, a senior leader of the ULFA faction that announced a ceasefire in 2008, lives in a two-bedroom rented house in Guwahati. He drives through town in a Scorpio. The organisation pays his rent, EMIs for his car and living expenses, for which members get 'donations'. He and nine top leaders receive Rs 45 lakh per month in cash from the government, to manage the camps.

Manipur's Kuki rebel leaders, too, live in the lap of luxury. Thongsei Haokip, the 'defence secretary' of the Kuki National Organisation, lives in a palatial mansion in Churachandpur. It has a manicured lawn, solar lamps and high walls. A 42-inch Sony Bravia flat screen TV dominates the living room; a six-seater table and a double-door 340-litre refrigerator crowd the dining room.

Designated camps were created in 1997 in Nagaland and Manipur to house fighters of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah faction), or NSCN-IM. The faction announced a ceasefire with the Government but did not forsake its deep bonds with Southeast Asia's thriving arms bazaars. A senior leader, Anthony Shimray, 52, was netted from Bihar in October 2010, after a joint operation by Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and National Investigation Agency (NIA).

Shimray, who was part of ceasefire talks with the government, was planning to procure 6,000 ak-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition from China. In the past three years, NIA has arrested and chargesheeted 78 militants from various insurgent groups for kidnapping, extortion and gun-running. NIA, which was set up in 2009 to probe terror-related cases, now believes North-east rebels are supplying arms to left-wing extremists in central India. On August 30, the Bihar Police recovered a US-made M16 assault rifle-a weapon favoured by North-east guerrillas-from a Maoist arms supplier. Shimray's arrest, however, has not stopped the trickle of arms from the Myanmar border. An ak-47 can still be bought for Rs 2 lakh, and a fibreglass Glock 17 pistol for Rs 1.5 lakh in the North-east.

In Assam, the North-east's largest and most populous state, police regard rebel groups in camps a serious threat to law and order. The state has over 5,000 insurgents from six militant outfits housed in 31 designated camps in ceasefires over the past decade. On August 20, the Guwahati Police arrested Hira Sarania, 45, a senior ulfa leader, for plotting a July 30 dacoity, where his associates looted Rs 92 lakh from the home of a Guwahati-based businessman and murdered two of his employees. A senior pro-talks leader admits Sarania had been told to "raise funds" to run two of the nine ULFA camps in Assam that house 580 rebels.

Over the past decade, the Assam Police has arrested 620 insurgents of various ceasefire groups for extortion, kidnapping and other crimes; the latest case was the arrest of two ULFA militants for extorting Rs 20 lakh from a private oil company in Sibsagar on August 20; 180 weapons have been seized. In the last two years, 185 insurgents have fled their designated camps carrying arms and ammunition with them: An NIA official calls them "recycled terrorists". "With no way of convicting them, these insurgents move freely between rebel groups and the states," he says. Several pro-talks ULFA insurgents have now crossed over to the anti-talks faction led by ULFA's Myanmar-based guerrilla leader Paresh Barua.

The levels of violence in the North-east are at their lowest in the past 15 years: Last year, 247 people were killed in violence in six of the seven North-eastern states. The death toll stood at 1,687 in 1997. Nearly every insurgent group now thrives on extortion. "Earlier, the groups needed the people's support, so they never targeted them," says a senior state government official in Nagaland. "The ceasefire has changed that," he says. No exact estimate of the criminal economy exists but it is believed to be several hundred crores. Two years ago, NIA recovered documents which revealed that the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), Manipur's largest insurgent group, siphoned Rs 50 crore every year from various state and Central government schemes.

In Nagaland, this extortion has taken the form of 'tax'. A rebel leader calls them "voluntary donations" from the people. The poor pay a house tax of Rs 1,000; businessmen and government servants pay each of the four main rebel groups nearly 25 per cent of their annual income. Sunil Thapa, a taxi operator in Dimapur, pays Rs 2,500 a year to three Naga rebel groups to ply his Alto taxi. In return, he gets a small visiting card-sized yellow receipt that certifies he has paid. "Rebels move out of camps with arms, flout ground rules and resort to extortion," admits Manipur Home Minister G. Gaikhangam.

Ceasefire rules in Assam and Manipur state that insurgent groups have to keep their existing weapons in a storehouse under double lock: One key each remains with the government and the guerrilla group. Assam home ministry officials term it a farce because rebels sometimes have both keys.

The slow progress in talks with North-eastern insurgent groups is also to blame for the simmering discontent. "Talks drag on interminably for years," says an Assam home ministry official. "These insurgents live in a kind of jail. It is foolish for the Government to think they will stay put," he says. "The camps were meant to be a temporary measure," says E. Rammohan, former director general, Border Security Force. "They should now be wound up and the weapons seized," he says.

In Nagaland, home to India's oldest insurgency that began in 1952, talks with NSCN(IM) have dragged on for 15 years. In Meghalaya, talks have been on since 2004 and irregular payment of monthly stipends split the Achik National Volunteers Council (ANVC) on March 30 this year. One faction with some 300 insurgents, including 'officers', walked back into the jungles with their weapons. The Kuki National Organisation has waited seven years for talks to begin. They have now set November 22 as the deadline for talks to start, failing which they will take up arms. A rebel accuses a senior bureaucrat in the Union home ministry of obstructing dialogue, an allegation echoed by ulfa leaders as well. "The longer the talks drag on, the more rebel groups will be created," admits a Nagaland government official. The North-east imbroglio makes for a classic case of the search for an elusive solution that will only lead to more problems.

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October 1, 2012

Guns and Butter in Billion-dollar Arms Deal

ndian Army at the mercy of shadowy arms dealers, lobbyists

Sandeep Unnithan  September 21, 2012 | UPDATED 15:22 IST

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In December, the Indian Army will test assault rifles from five foreign firms in a Rs 2,500-crore contract to buy a new rifle. The contract is crucial because it will decide the weapon that nearly 1.2 million infantrymen in the world's second largest army will carry for the next two decades. When the Army announced the tender in November 2011, it electrified the global arms industry. Besides the initial order of 65,678 Multi Caliber Assault Rifles (MCAR), the tender also calls for licence production of over 100,000 rifles in Indian ordnance factories, taking the deal to over $1 billion (Rs 5,500 crore). It is, officially, the world's largest small arms procurement in recent times.

Abhishek Verma An arms agent with a flashy lifestyle, Abhishek Verma lived in a plush rented farm house in South Delhi dubbed 'Verma Estate'. He reportedly advertised his parties through tweets, BBM messages and email. Verma worked for SIG Sauer since 2009, but his business was carried out by his partner, Anca Neacsu. He has been arrested thrice by CBI since June 2012.

Gun manufacturers in Russia, US, Europe and Israel took notice. In Delhi, arms agents began calculating the commissions from the deal-between Rs 100 crore and Rs 250 crore-nothing compared to other scams, but a substantial sum nevertheless.

Two players were already working for the mcar contract: Abhishek Verma and Bhupinder Singh. Abhishek Verma, 43, who is currently in jail for his involvement in the 2006 war-room leak case, worked for SIG Sauer Inc since 2009 but his business was carried out by his partner, Anca Neacsu. She was SIG India's managing director.

The other player in the fray, Bhupinder, 64, is quieter and flies below the radar. Known as 'Tusky' in arms circles, he lives in South Delhi's Vasant Vihar. For years, Bhupinder remained a fringe player in the home ministry, mainly servicing the police and paramilitary forces with small equipment contracts. Both the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) prohibit the use of agents in defence deals. In theory, all negotiations are conducted directly with the original equipment manufacturers. But these guidelines are not always followed.

"Abhishek is brash, loud and in--your-face and that was his undoing," says a Delhi-based arms agent. "Single malt flowed like water at his parties and guests were plied with European escorts." Tusky, however, is a smarter businessman, he says. "The parties at his Vasant Vihar home are discreet."

India's small arms imports were tiny and a monopoly of the state-owned Indian Ordnance Factories based in Kolkata. The November 26, 2008, attack on Mumbai and the war against Left-wing extremism came as a windfall for global arms manufacturers. The budget for the mha zoomed-the home ministry has a modernisation plan of Rs 38,000 crore to upgrade weapons and communications of state police and paramilitary forces over the next five years. Of this, Rs 13,000 crore will be spent on the seven paramilitary forces, and the rest on state police forces. Largescale imports of Bulgarian AK-47s, Israeli Tavors and German MP-5 sub-machine guns began.

Around 2009, Bhupinder took over as Italian weapon-maker Beretta's representative in India. "We have been working with Beretta officially for three years," he told INDIA TODAY. "There can be no hanky-panky when we deal with the home and defence ministries." His son Udai Singh, however, says they have applied for, but are yet to get, rbi permission to set up an office in India.

Bhupinder Singh Known as 'Tusky' in arms circles for his buck teeth, the nickname is a legacy of his days at Lawrence School Sanawar.A burly 6'3" clean-shaven Sikh, he lives in an opulent bungalow in South Delhi's Vasant Vihar. The son-in-law of a retired Army general, he represents Italian gunmaker Beretta.A keen golfer, he can be seen teeing off at the Delhi Golf Club and Army Golf Club.

Tusky and Udai Singh were the only arms agents present on all four days of the Border Security Force (BSF)'s weapon trials held between May 17 and 20 at their facility in Bhondsi, Uttar Pradesh. Officials present at the trials remember Bhupinder plying BSF officials with beer and soft drinks during the trials. On February 14, 2011, Delhi's defence circles sat up and took notice of him. Beretta signed the mha contract worth over Rs 200 crore for 34,377 carbines. Tusky was now in the big league of arms dealers such as Suresh Nanda, named by CBI as an agent in the Barak missile deal, and Mohinder Singh Sahni, also named by CBI as the agent in the Krasnopol guided munitions case.

The contract surprised everyone for the speed of its execution. It had taken less than three years from contract to delivery, unusual for India's lethargic bureaucracy. The National Security Guard (NSG), for instance, is yet to get helmets or bulletproof jackets it has tendered for after the Mumbai attack. The contract saw multiple controversies and complaints from rivals, saying they had been unfairly ejected from the trials. The bsf went ahead with the order despite detecting defects in 2,374 carbines of the entire order in February this year.

INDIA TODAY sent Beretta a detailed questionnaire about its relationship with Bhupinder and Udai and the defects that emerged in thetender. A spokesperson responded: "Beretta is bound by the 'confidentiality clause' with Indian authorities. We bagged the Indian Government's contract after participating in a tender process in which we figured on top."

Verma was furious because Beretta finally had a toehold in India. They were within sight of the ultimate arms contract, the Army's assault rifle tender that Verma had coveted. SIG had already entered the home ministry in 2007 with a consignment of 500 SiG 551 assault rifles for NSG.

Between December 5 and 7, Verma hosted SIG owner Michael Lueke and ceo Ron Cohen in Delhi. He laid out the red carpet so his employers knew he had connections deep in Delhi's political establishment. Over the next two days, he introduced them to politicians, bureaucrats and armed forces officials. Lueke and Cohen also met M.M. Pallam Raju, who has been minister of state for defence for nearly eight years. One particular entry in their two-day visit is interesting: 'Mr Gandhi, Member of Parliament (scion of the Gandhi family) at his residence'. It is not clear who this mysterious 'Mr Gandhi' is. india today contacted both Mr Gandhis in Parliament-Rahul and Varun. A spokesperson for Rahul said that though he was in Delhi that day, no such appointment had been scheduled and no meeting took place. Varun also denied having met Lueke and Cohen.

Lueke and Cohen also met Major General R.K. Rana, inspector general of the Special Frontier Force (SFF), a covert paramilitary force that operates under India's external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). "SFF is the most premier paramilitary organisation in India," Verma said in an email to his US employers in December 2011. "Whatever they buy, the rest buy."

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Besides SIG and Beretta, three other global firms responded to the army contract: Colt Defense of US, Ceska Zbplojovka of Czech Republic and Israeli Weapon Industries (IWI), which reportedly has the backing of a formidable London-based arms dealer.

In January, soon after the SIG brass visited India, a barrage of anonymous complaints was sent to the home minister, defence minister and the home and defence secretaries. "9 mm carbines for bsf, another scam," the complaint screamed in 36-point size type. "Beretta-Bhupinder Singh (Tusky)", the complaint further read, noting how the home ministry allowed arms agents to represent and lobby arms manufacturers. Stamped on all seven pages of the complaint was a line: "After a successful attempt with MHA, Beretta's ultimate target is mod."

Verma was believed to be behind the fusillade of complaints. But by January-end, he faced troubles of his own. Miffed after a lucrative deal fell through, Verma's former partner, New York-based lawyer C. Edmond Allen, wrote to CBI, MoD and MHA, of payoffs of $530,000 (Rs 3 crore) made by a Zurich-based Swiss arms firm, Rheinmetall Air Defence (RAD). He enclosed documents to show proof of the deals. RAD executives allegedly wanted Verma to remove a blacklist imposed on them in 2011 after they were found to be involved in the 2009 Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) bribery scam.

Click here to Enlarge

RAD, however, rejected allegations of being involved in corruption in India and said in a statement, "Such an allegation is false and without merit." Verma and Neacsu were charged with corruption and arrested by CBI in June. But the agency did not file a chargesheet so Verma got bail. CBI re-arrested him for forgery but couldn't file a chargesheet within the mandatory 60 days so Verma was freed again. He was finally arrested on August 30 under the Official Secrets Act for possessing classified MoD documents and procurement plans. Verma's lawyer, Vijay Aggarwal, has rubbished the allegations. On July 29, he told Mail Today, "All I can say is that daily something new comes out, which is clearly an attempt to influence court proceedings. This is not the appropriate time to comment."

The Army's tender has already been dogged by allegations that it had been fixed to favour Beretta. Two of the world's biggest rifle manufacturers, Belgium's FN Herstal and Germany's Heckler and Koch, did not participate in the contract bid in 2011 because they were not confident of winning.

The Army has switched its rifles only twice since Independence-after the 1962 China war, and around the 1999 Kargil war. The Army has been voicing its discontent with the existing indigenous 5.56 mm insas rifle. It also wants a rifle better than the 7.62 mm AK-47, which it uses to fight insurgency in J&K and the North-east. The new weapon has to have the ability to fire both 7.62mm and 5.56mm bullets. This would enable a soldier to change barrels to fire ammunition. This capability comes with a hefty price tag. Each rifle with a conversion kit would cost approximately 3,000 euros (Rs 200,000). An insas rifle manufactured by OFB costs Rs 35,000.

It is still unclear what research the Army did before the tender was floated. The service itself is divided over the contract. "No army in the world goes in for such an expensive and sophisticated weapon," says a general. "It will add to a soldier's burden and increase logistic nightmare. Multi-calibre weapons are usually supplied only to specialist units like commandos."

SIG has dropped Verma and Neacsu from their India business and is competing in the Army contract, for which trials will be held soon. Verma's removal from the scene means the competition for the world's largest gun contract has shrunk to just one important player.

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