Sting scribe, war veteran cleared in soldier's suicide

MUMBAI: The Bombay HC on Thursday struck down the criminal case lodged against a journalist and a triple amputee war veteran for allegedly abetting the suicide of an army jawan and violating the Official Secrets Act by carrying out a sting operation in a residential colony of officers in Nashik.
A division bench of Justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre said there was no material furnished by the authorities to show that the accused had “done something that affected national interest”. The HC was hearing a plea filed by journalist of a web portal and the retired soldier seeking the dropping of charges. On February 7, 2017, journalist Poonam Agarwal and Deepchand Singh, a retired soldier who had lost his legs and an arm in war and was running a canteen at the Deolali Camp in Nashik, claimed to have conducted the sting operation “to expose practices followed by some superior officers in the Army misusing the Sahayak System”. The video was published on the portal.
After the video went viral, Roy Mathew, a sahayak who was interviewed, committed suicide on March 2, 2017. Roy’s colleague lodged an FIR on March 27, 2017. The prosecution claimed that the video had driven Roy to commit suicide.
Advocate Uday Warunjikar, Agarwal’s counsel, said there was a substantial time gap between the video being uploaded and the suicide. “The jawan was scolded by his seniors. The provisions of Official Secrets Act could not have been applied as the jawans were interviewed in a garden in a residential colony,” he said. The Army had filed an application accusing Agarwal and Singh of spying. The bench, which watched the video, did not agree and said spying had a different meaning.
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