By IANS
New Delhi : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Friday registered a criminal case against Maj. Gen. (Retd) V.K. Singh, a former official of the country’s external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), for divulging official secrets. Singh could be arrested soon.
Maj Gen Singh had recently questioned the previous government’s sagacity behind making public the telephonic conversation between then Pakistan army chief General Pervez Musharraf and his chief of staff, intercepted by the Research and Analysis Wing during the 1999 Kargil war.
Maj Gen Singh’s residence was late Friday evening raided by CBI sleuths. A CBI spokesperson said the former army officer, who worked with RAW between 2000-04, was found in possession of a lot of “secret, incriminating documents” and was being questioned. He indicated Singh’s early arrest.
Earlier, the investigating agency booked Maj Gen Singh under the Official Secrets Act for divulging official secrets in a book “India’s External Intelligence-Secrets of RAW”, in which he questioned the internal functioning and unaccountability of the agency.
A CBI spokesperson said Maj Gen Singh has been “booked under Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act for making wrong communication”. CBI sleuths searchded his residence at Palam Vihar in southwest Delhi and seized several documents.
Sources said the former army officer was booked under the Official Secrets Act, following advice by the Cabinet Secretariat.
Maj Gen Singh was inducted into RAW from the army’s Signal Corps to look after the agency’s technical intelligence. During his 2000-2004 stint, he was witness to several key developments in the agency, which he has documented in his book. The book hit the stands recently.
Singh’s recently released book basically addresses three issues in the organisation – lack of leadership, lack of accountability, and political mishandling.
In his book, Singh questioned the erstwhile Vajpayee government’s decision to hand over the transcription of the telephonic conversation between Pervez Musharraf and his chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz to former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif in June 1999.
After the tapes were made public, the Pakistani establishment got wind of the technology being used by the Indian intelligence to tap their internal communication and in no time the leak was plugged, eventually leading to information drying up, said Maj Gen Singh in his book.
In his book, Singh also wrote of the communication systems procured by the Special Protection Group for the prime minister from an American firm in 2001 and how the RAW leadership failed to carry out due diligence.
Singh also questioned the lack of parliamentary control over the RAW’s functioning and the total financial autonomy.