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VK Singh’s family alleges snooping by Army New Delhi, January 5 A Major from the Corps of Signals, who was detailed to visit the house of the former Army Chief for official work, was detained by the guards and the family of General VK Singh (retd), alleging it was an unauthorised visit and the motive was to install snooping bugs. The Army had denied this. General VK Singh, who retired on May 31 last year, has been allocated an Army accommodation for a period of one year (till May 31, 2013) on Mandir Marg in the cantonment. The Major was detained in the house of General VK Singh as his family saw this as an attempt to plant bugs. Indian Army spokesman Colonel Jagdeep Dahiya vehemently denied this saying the signal team was there to remove the official communication equipment. General VK Singh is out of Delhi on a private visit. Late in the evening, Col Dahiya issued a formal statement saying “apparently due to miscommunication, advance information did not reach the residence of Gen VK Singh (retd). The lack of advance information caused slight resentment. The matter was amicably resolved with the intervention of the General Officer Commanding, Delhi Area. The Army respects all its retired Chiefs and senior officers and will continue to do so.” Major R Vikram was detained around 11 pm. Surprisingly, the media got entry inside the house of the former Army Chief and tried to speak to the Major, who was not authorised to speak to the media. It was only around 5 pm that that the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Delhi area, a Lieut-General-rank officer, visited the house and tendered an apology for the ‘communication gap’ that the stand-off ended. General VK Singh’s lawyer, Vishwajeet Singh, told reporters: “We found him (Major) at the house. They (team) could not give any reasonable logic for (his) being here. They had no valid documents. They may have come to bug
the phone. We detained, apprehended him.” Army authorities explained the sequence saying the signals team had been detailed to remove a special telecommunication exchange installed at the house. Such equipment is part of the protocol for a person under Z-category of security as all calls made to the protected person are routed through an operator and that equipment. Once the Z-category security period (six months after his retirement) ended on November 30, the equipment had to be removed and the operators, now redundant, had to be called back. The signals team went to the house and met the former Chief’s daughter. She even spoke to the commanding officer of the Signals unit in Delhi, officials said. As the team was doing its work, Bharati Singh, wife of General VK Singh, arrived and objected to the removal of the exchange equipment without prior intimation and asked the team for its authorisation. The team reportedly was not carrying the written
authorisation.
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