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Ladakh anti-corruption drive gets cold response

Praveen Swami

Police raids on stores stocking pilfered Siachen supplies anger Army, local residents

Life has become much harder due to lack of supplies
16 Corps source of embarrassment on a welter of issues

LEH: Six months after the Jammu and Kashmir Police began investigating the large-scale theft of supplies meant for Indian troops on the Siachen glacier has run into an improbable roadblock: an irate local community.

Each winter, when night-time temperatures drop below -25 Celsius, local residents have depended on stocks of fuel and food pilfered from the Army deployed along the Line of Control. Now, though, stores which for long stocked pilfered food and fuel have been shut down — and life in Ladakh has become that much harder.

“We get just 10 litres of subsidised kerosene per head each month,” explains Nubra MLA Pinto Norbu, “which is barely enough to keep one home warm for a day. Given the transport costs, open-market fuel and food are prohibitive. Pilfered supplies are seen as subsidies — not as corruption.” Not surprisingly, the anti-corruption campaign has led to protests against Leh Senior Superintendent of Police Alok Kumar.

Large-scale pilferage

Investigations into the special ration fraud had begun in July, after policemen in the remote frontier village of Chumathang seized high-altitude supplies meant for Siachen-based troops from local shopkeepers. A First Information Report filed that month recorded that personnel of the 5 Rajput Regiment had sold the supplies, which were valued at Rs. 70,000.

Police in Ladakh followed up the Chumathang seizure with a series of raids across the region. On July 14, high-altitude special rations worth Rs.3,20,000 were found in the stocks of seven shopkeepers in Leh. Over the next two days, the Nubra police station recovered an estimated Rs. 45,000 of Siachen supplies from two shopkeepers in the villages of Sasoma, Tegar and Hundar.

In all, 18 raids were conducted in which 31 Ladakh residents, 14 of them shopkeepers, were held. In statements made before a Judicial Magistrate in Nubra, three witnesses corroborated claims by those arrested that military personnel had sold them the Siachen supplies. Six officers of the 3 Infantry Division were named in these statements.

Since then, the police has written three times to the Army, asking for the officers to be made available for questioning. No formal response, police sources said, had yet been received. However, officials at the Army Headquarters in New Delhi say their own investigation into the affair, which has led to disciplinary action against two junior Army Supply Corps officers, renders further police action unnecessary.

Repeated embarrassments

Leh-based 16 Corps has been the source of repeated embarrassments for the Army in recent years, on a welter of issues ranging from corruption to the sexual harassment of women officers. The formation was set up in the wake of the Kargil war, amid allegations that officers of the 3 Infantry Division — which is now part of the 16 Corps — had been negligent in guarding the Line of Control.

Just last year, a police investigation led to the uncovering of the large-scale pilferage of diesel despatched to Leh from the Northern Command supply bases in Pathankot. The fraud was uncovered after police seized seven 9,000-litre trucks of the Indian Oil Corporation, which had carried water from Pathankot to Leh, instead of their intended cargo of diesel. Three officers were later indicted by a military court for corruption.

Fuel needs cut

Since then, sources said, a full-scale internal investigation by the Army had led the 16 Corps to reduce its estimated annual fuel needs by a sixth. Aman Sharma, the head of the Jammu and Kashmir Petrol Tank Owners’ Association, had earlier asserted that a third of all supplies intended for the Army were pilfered, either at their sources in the plains or to meet local residents’ demands for fuel.

At the heart of the problem, Army sources said, is that there just is too much fuel and food being pumped into the 16 Corps’ area of responsibility — in turn, the consequence of media concern about the conditions of soldiers stationed at high altitudes along the LoC. “We allot about 1.5 kilograms of food per day for soldiers on the Siachen,” one officer said, “which is more than anyone can work their way through.” Much of the surplus — fuel, of course, but also large quantities of chocolate, dry fruits, nuts and winter-wear — inevitably ends up in the open market. “The whole system is an invitation to corruption,” said a police officer involved in the investigation, “and since local residents benefit from it, no one sees reason to complain. No one is hurt — except taxpayers across the country.”

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