NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Defence Ministry and others on a petition moved by an Air Force officer, who was terminated after the accidental launch of BrahMos cruise missile that landed in Pakistan in March last year.
A division bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Neena Bansal Krishna directed the Ministry of Defence, Chief of Air Staff and others to respond to former Wing Commander Abhinav Sharma’s plea within six weeks.
The sacked officer was granted four weeks to file his rejoinder thereafter. BrahMos missile was accidentally fired on March 9, 2022. The supersonic cruise missile landed around 120 km in Pakistan’s Mian Channu in the Khanewal district. It did not have any explosives thus, there was no detonation.
The incident led to a diplomatic row between the two countries. The Ministry of Defence has said that incident was caused due to a technical glitch during routine maintenance. Expressing regret for the incident, the Indian Government ordered to probe of the matter at a high level, following which three officers, including Sharma, were sacked.
As per the petitioner, he was posted as an engineering officer to the squadron and he was imparting professional and practical training only for duties that were pure of a maintenance nature. It was also argued that he had no experience in conducting operations and handling operational emergencies. “The petitioner was not trained against the counts of blame apportioned to him in the court of inquiry and he acted in complete obedience to the SOP. The petitioner had no experience in conducting operations and handling operational emergencies and the respondents acted in a completely malafide manner by issuing the termination order,” his plea read.
The petitioner also argued that he was denied the opportunity to stand trial by a court martial as the authorities invoked Section 18 of the Air Force Act.