'IAF Terminated Me Wrongfully', Claims Officer Sacked For BrahMos Missile 'Misfire' Into Pakistan

An Indian Air Force officer has filed a petition in Delhi High Court for his termination following the accident launch of the BrahMos missile which subsequently landed in Pakistan last year, reports The Indian Express.

The Delhi High Court issued a notice to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Centre and Chief of Air Staff (CAS) and others in response to Wing Commander Abhinav Sharma's petition. 

The two-judge division bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Neena Bansal instructed the Centre to file its responses in six weeks and any rejoinder within four weeks.

Last year (9 March), a BrahMos supersonic cruise missile was mistakenly fired that crashed in Pakistan. The missile was unarmed and no fatalities were reported.

According to a plea, the petitioner was fired from his service as an engineering officer in the Air Force under Section 18 of the Air Force Act, 1950, also known as the doctrine of pleasure.

The petitioner claims that he was providing professional and practical training to his squadron only for maintenance-related duties at the time of the incident.

Furthermore, he asserts that he never provided training on the conduct of operations, which falls solely under the responsibilities of the Commanding Officer and the Ops officer.

The IE reports says quoting the plea, “The Petitioner was not trained against the counts of blame apportioned to him in the Court of Inquiry and he acted in complete obedience of the SOP”.

“The Petitioner had no experience in conducting operations and handling operational emergencies and the Respondents acted in a completely mala fide manner by issuing the Impugned Termination Order”.

“Invoking Section 18 of the Air Force Act for terminating the petitioner, the authorities “intentionally circumvented” the process for initiating disciplinary action and the requirement of trial by a Court Martial,” the petition added.

The petitioner's senior advocate, N Hariharan, argues that his client's services were illegally terminated through the misuse of Section 18 in place of the traditional court martial procedure, and that a fair trial would have revealed the truth.

He asserts that the use of Section 18 was a mere cover-up to dodge judicial scrutiny, and calls for the actual facts to be brought to light.

“Termination as per Air Force Act can happen only post court martial. What they have done is instead of holding court marital, they issued the order under section 18 and terminated my client“.

There was a preliminary enquiry but ultimately charges are to be framed by way of court martial, which they avoided because there was a policy failure,” he said.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Chetan Sharma contested the maintainability of the plea made by the petitioner.

According to the report Sharma said, an order of dismissal cannot be challenged unless there is evidence of mala fide.

Sharma also added that this incident cause humiliation to the country at the international level and could have triggered a potentially dangerous conflict between India and Pakistan.

“Admittedly, this is the matter where we stood embarrassed before the international community. The missile didn’t land in India, it landed in Pakistan. It could’ve led to a situation of war and that country made a representation to the United Nations,” Sharma said.

Furthermore, Sharma raised the petitioner's delay in approaching the High Court, as he waited for eight months after being terminated, while similar actions were taken against other officers.

“The other three officers are not coming to court. He is coming after eight months and also participates in the enquiry fully. There is no allegation of natural justicie being affected. He has to allege mala fide in the manner, the process, the details… how mala fide has worked itself out”, Sharma added.