Some extracts of my book
I was duty Officer on 07 Oct 1985 in a unit at visakhapatnam.
During mid night, the Duty RPO came to me and reported that one DSC Jawan was very heavily drunk at missile fuel dump. He informed me that the jawan had a loaded rifle with him and one accidental shot would be sufficient to make entire Visakhapatnam burn, as his post is near missile fuel storage facility & warhead section.
Duty RPO further informed me that the Jawan had man handled him, when he approached him for his round report.
I asked the duty MCPO (A senior Incharge), to personally check the state of the DSC Jawan.
I tried to contact CO also on telephone. Those were the days when phones were generally defective. I could not contact CO, inspite of several attempts.
Duty MCPO returned and confirmed that the DSc Jawan was piss drunk & presumably having loaded rifle with him. The Jawan had tried to manhandle duty MCPO also.
MCPO advised me to take immediate action as there was a threat to the lives of several people in the vicinity.
I Immidiately rushed to the missile fuel dump and found that the DSC Jawan, was in a very bad state.
I politely told him that I was duty officer of the day.
I requested him to return to barracks and relax as he was not in a good health state to perform his duty.
To this the jawan threatened me, to not to interfere in his affairs and leave his place of duty.
He refused to leave the post. I was aware that one wrong action on the part of this jawan, entire city may have to suffer.
This fear was mainly due to the vicinity of his security post. It was located near the war heads section, fuel dump, storage tanks & some specialist vehicles.
In spite of my several requests, the jawan did not obey me.
While, I was requesting the drunk jawan, I kept on advancing towards him.
Finally when I reached very close to him, the jawan understood my intentions and hit me with his Rifle butt. Sensing immediate danger that his next action may be to shoot me, I jumped on him and over powered him. Duty staff, also helped me in over powering him. The scuffle, probably lasted a few minutes, I hit him on his stomach.
( Later on , he pretended that he was vomiting blood. I’m not sure that I punched him or not but I must have taken this extreme action, as i knew one accidental shot from his loaded rifle, could have killed me)
Next day early morning, I handed over the duties to EXO and briefed him about the incident in details.
Although I briefed him correctly without doubting his integrity, the EXO briefed the Officer In Charge/CO a fabricated story wherein We the Duty Officer, Duty MCPO and Duty RPO were made main accused and the real culprit was declared innocent by him.
(As the Jawan was local lingo of the EXO)
ExO went to an extent that he with the help of another DSC Jawan, un loaded the Rifle so that all evidences, against the jawan were destroyed..
The CO sent us ie Duty officer, Duty MCPO & Duty CPO to hospital for our medical examination. The Jawan, who was actually drunk was also sent to hospital, but for medical treatment, as he had pretended that he was vomiting blood, due my hitting him on his stomach.
Our medical examinations, did not reveal any consumption/traces of alcohol.
The EXO was able to convince CO that the duty staff were the main culprits and are to be summarily tried.
CO on advise of ExO, informed HQ about the event. They summarily tried all the senior sailors ie duty Master Chief, duty CPO etc.
Head Quarters, could not take any action against me on this case as one wrong action could have ruined careers of many aspiring officers. They decided to hush up the case.
However they fabricated another false incident & cooked up another story to punish me. During Summary Court Martial of sailors, EXO informed CO that the sailors used excess force to man handle the DSC Jawan. I being Divisional Officer of the sailors informed CO that whatever sailors had done & whatever actions they had taken, were consequent to my direct order to them and the sailors had not used any excess force. Rather they obeyed me & performed their duties effectively. I further told the CO that I take the responsibility of entire incident .
and if had guts then he may try me in any court of India.
However CO was in no mood to listen to me as he had some ill conceived plan.He had already decided the punishment part for every one.
They had planned another incident, so as to falsely implicate me & transfer me out of the unit, under some pretext ie to some other place, where they could easily punish me. After the Summary trial, I was again placed on duty roster & during my next duty as OOD, I got a call from an Inspector of local Police Station at bimnipatnam that two sailors of my unit had met with major accident and they had no driving licence.
Immediately I reached Police Station and found one Naval Police Sailor and One Air Handler ( A Service Qualified Driver) sitting their with Service motor cycle lying in the police station. They were not carrying any Authorization/Work Sheet for the vehicle. There was no damage on the Vehicle. There was no injury to these sailors. In short there was no reason to detain these people in the Police Station. They were also not drunk. To my surprise, they did not even show their driving licence to the Inspector. (No Air handler & Naval Police sailor can drive military vehicle without driving licence as they are not permitted to do so) The police informed HQENC and the Command ordered Board of Inquiry.
I failed to understand the reason of Board of inquiry for such a minor incident as the head quarters had earlier ignored a big incident, but for this minor case, they were hyper.
I knew the incident was fabricated and the plan of HQ was only to punish me, but I was helpless. Fortunately the Board President was a mature person and did not take time to understand the evil designs to implicate me in this false case. The board of officers, concluded that I was innocent and had no direct or indirect concern with this incident. Thus their plan failed due the honesty of a few board members.
Immediately after this Inquiry, I was attached with HQ.
They got me transferred out to a unit in Goa with instructions to my new unit to keep my performance under observation.
Probably they had planned some more fabricated stories.