2 min readNew DelhiDec 4, 2008 12:00 AM IST
First published on: Dec 4, 2008 at 12:34 AM IST
Navy Chief Sureesh Mehta lashed out against the media at the annual Navy briefing on Tuesday, but got his facts wrong. The fuming Admiral, who at one point even told reporters that ‘I would have chopped your heads off’ for an alleged ‘breach of privilege’, said a “Colonel was dismissed after he fired an artillery round on requests by an NDTV reporter that resulted in retaliatory fire which killed three jawans”.
However, Army records show there was no such dismissal. Top officers who served the Army during the conflict also confirmed that such an incident did not occur and no inquiry ever proved that the soldiers had died due to media interference.
The Navy Chief, who has been giving television channels several rounds of interviews after the anti-pirate action by the INS Tabar in the Gulf of Aden last month, called the media a ‘disabling factor’ and criticised the coverage of the Mumbai attack by the electronic media.
Mehta also said he would have ‘chopped’ off the heads of two reporters who aired an interview given by him on the occasion of Navy Day ahead of the scheduled time. The Chief was apparently angry that his comments on the sinking of the Thai fishing trawler that had been taken over by pirates in the Gulf of Aden were aired by the channels. “That was an interview not to be played earlier than day after tomorrow. They wanted to score brownie points,” he said.
The Navy Chief, who interspersed the press conference on sarcastic remarks about the media, has himself come under scrutiny after an unauthorised press conference by the elite Marine Commando team in Mumbai. The Defence Ministry has expressed its displeasure over the handling of the event and the fact that Vice Admiral J S Bedi, the Western Naval Commander, revealed sensitive information to electronic channels.
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