Former Indian Army chief general V K Singh lashed out at Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express, on micro-blogging website Twitter, accusing him of catering to the UPA government for publishing reports against him.
The newspaper daily had published an investigative story dated 20 September 2013, where General Singh is accused of misusing secret service funds to destabilise the Jammu and Kashmir government and to buy off-air interception equipment to conduct 'unauthorised' covert operations, based on a report submitted by the army to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The MoD declared that it would take action after examining the report by a top army panel. The report contains details of alleged dubious operations by an intelligence unit set up by General Singh.
On Monday, the army general tweeted, "Some pieces of information about Shekhar Gupta, CE @IndianExpress: 1.His company was involved in Commonwealth Games (read scam) too (1/Many). With a 55 Cr house on Malcha marg, he can be trusted to be a UPA stooge. No doubt he has been using IE as a medium to put out slander."
The Opposition, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), called it a political vendetta against General Singh for he had addressed a rally held by the NDA prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in Rewari, Haryana, on 15 September.
General Singh further accused Gupta and his wife of tax frauds. "3.Shekhar Gupta's company's data: He & his wife Neelam Jolly started a company Greenpine Agro Pvt Ltd in 2002. No accounts filed 4 many yrs," he tweeted.
He alleged that Gupta filed balance sheets of eight years on a single day of 18 January 2010. "Closed down the company by filing EES (Early Exit Scheme like @RahulDumbGandhi backops) on Aug 30, 2010. #ShekharGupta @IndianExpress. Accounts are cooked up. One loan he took in 2002, for a meagre Rs12 lakh shows he that at the time he owned three 2 acre farms #ShekharGupta," he tweeted
The former army chief said he had proof of all the allegations against Gupta.
On Saturday, Gernal Singh hit out at the UPA government saying that the controversial intelligence unit, Technical Services Division (TSD), was set up by the government itself after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
He also slammed Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah following the allegations. "Omar blames all his blunders and misgovernance on Indian Army and he thinks people are fools to believe him," he said.
The expose that began with a report from the state-held news agency, PTI, has received criticisms from most of the retired military officials.
"When our Secret Ser(vice) Fund is so secret that it is not even audit-able by CAG it is suicidal to expose its spending details in public. When we expose our secret service fund exp(enditure) in a bid to fix Gen VK, it is pathetic that we are not realising the damages it can inflict," Col (retd) NR Kurup, who is an RTI activist, had tweeted on 21 September.
"I wish our Hon'ble Def(ence) Min should have spared some time to learn about Tech Support Group sanctioned by him before making the issue public," he added.
General Singh also filed a Right to Information on Monday seeking an army board of enquiry report on the military unit TSD.
