Court martial orders Colonel’s dismissal from service for affair with another Colonel’s wife

The trial was presided over by Brigadier Jagminder Singh Gill of Headquarters Uniform Force with six Colonels as members. The court martial was ordered by Major General K Mahesh, General Officer Commanding, 8 Mountain Division. The sentence of the court martial is subject to confirmation by the convening authority.

The first charge against the Colonel pertained to Section 45 of the Army Act, which deals with “Being an officer behaving in a manner unbecoming his position and the character expected of him”. It accused the officer of being in communication, through telephone calls at odd hours between 10 pm and 6 am, with the wife of another Colonel between September 1, 2021 and August 31, 2022.

The officer was found not guilty of this charge by the court martial. The husband of the woman with whom he had been in touch alleged that he had received his wife’s call details in a package sent by an unknown person.

The second and third charges were also under Section 45 of the Army Act, and they accused the Colonel of having stayed in Hotel Radisson Blu Haridwar and Hotel NJ Portico Dehradun with the wife of another Colonel on two occasions in September 2021 and April 2022. He was found guilty of both charges by the court martial.

The fourth charge against the Colonel was under Section 69 of the Army Act, which pertained to using a forged document. The accusation was that he fraudulently used the ‘Dependent Card’ of the other Colonel’s wife as genuine, well knowing it to be a forged document. The accused officer was found guilty of this charge, too.

The Colonel who complained about improper relations of the accused with his wife testified at the trial that he was happily married since December 2006, but he could sense some changes in his wife’s behaviour ever since she came back from vacations in Haridwar and a visit to Leh, where she stayed in an accommodation arranged by the accused.

During the course of the trial, it was also disclosed that the wife of the Colonel had levelled allegations of matrimonial dispute, including domestic violence, dowry and sexual harassment against her husband and that she had been harassed for the past 16 years and cannot stay with him any further.

She also deposed during the trial that the accused Colonel and she were classmates since primary school and that, as a 42-year-old adult, it was her prerogative to decide whom she would speak to or not. She had also denied that she stayed in any hotel with him.

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