Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The Supreme Court today refused to come to the aid of former Military Secretary Lt Gen (retd) Avadesh Prakash in the Sukna land deal case,telling him that more skeletons will tumble out if they start digging.
A division bench of Justices V S Sirpurkar and M K Sharma said Prakash,who had petitioned for a stay on the February 22 judgment of the Armed Forces Tribunal and quashing of the Court of Inquiry (CoI),was fighting a lost battle.
The tribunal had directed the government to re-convene the CoI process and allow Prakash to cross-examine six principal witnesses in the case.
Recommending that he face the CoI,the bench dismissed Prakashs plea for an investigation into irregularities in the inquiry proceedings with the remark that
if we start digging,more skeletons will tumble out of the closet.
You are fighting a lost battle here. But you are a soldier,you can still fight, the court said. To this,senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi replied that he (Prakash) wants to fight to the last bullet.
On September 30 last year,the CoI,held at the Kolkata Headquarters,indicted Prakash for allegedly influencing the then General Officer Commanding 33 Corps P K Rath to issue a no-objection certificate for the transfer of 71.55 acres adjacent to the Sukna military station to friend and real estate developer Dilip Agarwal.
Prakash will now be issued a fresh set of dates for appearing before the re-convened CoI.
