Activities and funding of the Technical Services Division (TSD) — the controversial intelligence unit Gen. Singh set up in 2010, is under the scanner

When present Union Minister Gen. V.K. Singh (Retd.).was just days away from retiring as Army Chief in 2012, the Army destroyed dozens of documents on a military intelligence unit that he had created and whose activities and funding >had attracted widespread scrutiny.

According to >documents perused by The Hindu, between May 22 and May 25, 2012, the Southern Army Command based in Pune moved very quickly to assemble two different boards of officers to carry out the complete destruction of all documents in its custody on Technical Services Division (TSD) — the controversial military intelligence unit Gen. Singh had set up in 2010. He retired on May 31, 2012 and later plunged into a political career with the BJP, and is now Minister of State for External Affairs in the Narendra Modi government.

The destroyed files included payments of military intelligence funds by TSD for several months of 2010 and 2011. One file contains a detailed month-wise bank statement of the unit. Another is on the claims by Colonel Hunny Bakshi, who was heading TSD. It also contains a file on temporary duty and claims of Col. Bakshi, and a separate file on the claims of Lt. Col. Servesh Dhadwal, who, too, was part of TSD. One of the files deals with foreign visits, presumably of TSD officers.

Also destroyed were a “statement of case for raising of Technical Services Division (TSD)”; details of the operational role, tasks, and charter of TSD; the channel of reporting of TSD; a request on policy for spending the secret fund; policy on usage of post-paid mobile connection; and some intelligence inputs.

According to a report by The Indian Express on August 4, 2014, an internal inquiry by Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia, the then Director General of Military Operations, found that TSD had misused secret service funds to buy mobile phone interceptors without authorisation, to fund activities to destabilise the Omar Abdullah government in Jammu and Kashmir, to fund an NGO that tried to scuttle the chances of General Bikram Singh succeeding Gen. V. K. Singh as Army chief, and for foreign travel of its officers on their personal passports

The then Defence Secretary, S.K. Sharma, had refused to give his mandatory approval to the military intelligence budget, because of an abnormal increase in its spending, primarily caused by TSD activities.

Against this background, the conduct of the Army in the days running up to Gen.V.K. Singh’s retirement raises serious questions of impropriety.

More importantly, the actions could be in violation of Army regulations as well as the rules governing the classification and handling of classified documents.

The entire data on TSD, including money spent on its supposed purported sources and reimbursement to its officers for travel and other activities, came into the custody of the Southern Army Command after TSD’s havildar-clerk, Sham Das D, mysteriously appeared in Kerala to hand over a CD containing all the details to an official of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI). The DRI official claimed that he was contacted by sources based abroad, offering to sell highly sensitive military secrets.

The DRI passed on the documents to a Major heading the detachment of the Southern Army Command liaison unit in Thiruvananthapuram. These files were written into a CD and sent to Pune, and further to the Army headquarters.

On May 22, Brigadier V.K.K. Chavan, BGS (Intelligence) of the Southern Command “for GOC-in-C” (general officer commanding-in-chief), told Col. Anoop Kumar, the commanding officer of the liaison unit: “Request destroy all the letters mentioned in Para 1 above and all connected corres/docu related to this sensitive case at your HQ and also at 2/4 Det loc Trivendrum to eradicate any chances of leakage of info.”

However, there seemed to have no such effort to reach out to the DRI to eradicate details that may have been in its custody.

The very next day, Col. Kumar convened two different boards of officers: one for destroying all documents that were held in Thiruvananthapuram, and the other for documents in Pune. They were told to “assemble at place, date and time to be fixed by the presiding Offr to recommend and destroy” office copy of the southern command liaison unit letter dated May 17, and two letters dated May 18. The boards will also destroy “all connected corres/docu related to the sensitive case,” the order said.

On May 25, the two boards met and decided on destroying all documents, including official communication between the liaison unit and the Southern Army Command. The documents destroyed by the two boards were identical and numbered up to 62 items by the boards. Most of them were documents from a TSD computer.

On May 25, Col. Anoop Kumar commanding officer of the southern command liaison unit, approved the “destruction of documents as instructed” by the southern command. He quoted relevant paragraphs from the Regulations for the Army 1987 and CHCD-2001 (Classification and Handling of Classified Documents) to approve the decisions of the boards held on the same day.

“However, it will be ensured that no documents are destroyed which may be of interest from historical, financial, statistical, instructional, legal or general points of view,” he said.

Col. Kumar’s claim runs contrary to the fact that the entire set of documents were recovered from a soldier who was under a court of inquiry for leaking them and they were the most important exhibit against him. And that the documents related to the financial dealings of a unit that was already under scrutiny at the highest levels.