Thirty-three years after the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) returned from Sri Lanka in 1990, the Madras High Court has set aside the conviction and the two-year sentence imposed on Major General A.K. Gupta for having allegedly indulged in corrupt practices in the purchase of tinned meat kheema for IPKF soldiers between 1987 and 1988.
Justice G. Jayachandran allowed a criminal appeal pending in the High Court for the last 10 years and extended the benefit of doubt to the former Army officer, while setting aside the May 29, 2013 judgment of a special court for Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) cases. Another appeal filed by co-accused Lt. Colonel S.S. Kadian stood abated since he had died pending adjudication.
According to the prosecution, the alleged offence committed by Major General Gupta was initially investigated by a Court of Inquiry. Based on its findings, he was sent to face General Court Martial. On the way to Ahmed Nagar in Maharashtra in a train, the officer escaped from custody on June 9, 1990, and was traced in Delhi on October 29, 1990. Due to his escape, the time to complete the court martial proceedings lapsed and the case became time barred to be tried by Army authorities. Hence, the Army decided to lodge a complaint with the CBI and, accordingly, Col. M.M. Mandanna lodged a written complaint alleging illegalities in procurement of essential supplies for the IPKF troops.
According to the complainant, there were irregularities in purchase of 40.768 tonnes of tea at a cost of ₹12 lakh, 19.85 kilo litres of disinfectant liquid at a cost of ₹2.7 lakh, 53.477 tonnes of tinned milk at a cost of ₹15.35 lakh and 83.063 tonnes of tinned meat kheema at a cost of ₹61.20 lakh during the first IPKF operation code-named Pawan in October 1987.
In December 1990, the then CBI Superintendent of Police K. Ragothaman, who subsequently became the Chief Investigating Officer of the Special Investigation Team that probed the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, had registered the case against Major General Gupta and four private companies that had supplied the essentials.
However, it took 11 years for the investigation to be completed and a charge sheet was filed on December 11, 2001, only with respect to procurement of tinned meat kheema against Major General Gupta, Lt. Col Kadian and Coasta and Co Pvt Ltd in Goa, which had supplied the tinned meat. It took 12 more years for the trial to complete in 2013 and 10 more years for the High Court to decide the appeal.
Allowing the appeal, Justice Jayachandran wrote that the conduct of the Major General in having escaped from custody to avoid Court Martial had weighed in the mind of the trial court while convicting him. “Suspicion based on subsequent conduct of the accused and acceptance of the prosecution version without sufficient material to corroborate the same warrants an interference with the decision of the trial court,” he wrote, and added that the CBI had failed to prove charges of criminal conspiracy and corruption beyond reasonable doubt.
The judge said that the members of a committee that authorised purchases had not been examined before the trial court. Further, one of the witnesses had deposed before the trial court that most of the decisions, including those related to provision of supplies to the IPKF soldiers, were taken orally to maintain secrecy.
“Therefore, this court is of the view that the charge sheet has been filed with truncated materials and without scrutinising the materials in their entirety,” the judge concluded.
