Arms dealers’ farewell to air staff VC miffs Antony

Taking a serious umbrage at foreign defence vendors allegedly bankrolling a farewell party to vice-chief of Air Staff DC Kumaria in June, defence minister AK Antony has now sought detailed explanation from Indian Air Force (IAF) . Shishir Gupta reports.

Updated on: Jul 22, 2013, 10:58:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Taking a serious umbrage at foreign defence vendors allegedly bankrolling a farewell party to vice-chief of Air Staff DC Kumaria in June, defence minister AK Antony has now sought detailed explanation from Indian Air Force (IAF) despite the latter seeking pardon for the officer on the grounds of no formal Intelligence Bureau (IB) report.

With the IAF already under cloud with its former air chief SPS Tyagi being probed for alleged kickbacks in Augusta-Westland VVIP helicopter deal, Antony is peeved with the behaviour of Air Marshal Kumaria, who retired on June 30 as Vice Chief and is responsible for all procurement in IAF. Not satisfied with IAF’s explanation last week, the Defence Ministry has asked for details from IAF before asking the IB for a report.

On June 7, Air Marshal Kumaria was given a farewell party at Jacaranda Hall at India Habitat Centre. Hosted by the editor of a defence trade magazine along with former Western Air Commander of IAF, the party was attended by representatives of all major defence contractors who have either supplied or are planning to supply weapon systems and platforms to the Air Force. Defence ministry has names of all those representatives who attended and bankrolled the farewell bash.

After the party was reported in the media on July 1, the defence ministry asked the IAF for explanation on July 5. After dilly-dallying, the IAF replied last week apparently saying the then serving officer left the party after he saw representatives of defence majors. The IAF has requested the government to take a lenient view on the officer on grounds that there was no formal IB report on the issue.

When contacted senior IAF official refused to divulge any details saying the entire issue is with defence ministry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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