Army chief had warned exercise may be misconstrued

The Indian Army chief, General VK Singh, had forewarned of a controversy that an army exercise would be misconstrued as "something else" by people with "nefarious aims".

The Indian Army chief, General VK Singh, had forewarned of a controversy that an army exercise would be misconstrued as "something else" by people with "nefarious aims".

It came during an interview to an English weekly March 13, weeks before Indian Express on Wednesday reported that an "unnotified" movement of two key army units near Delhi in January had spooked the government.

"Even, let us say one of our forces or divisions or brigades does exercise, somebody will say, oh! they did exercise. It was not an exercise, they wanted to do something else," Singh told The Week magazine.

"Now you will make a story out of it. There are lots of people who want to make stories these days for various nefarious aims, if I can put it like that," the army chief said in the interview released a day after the Indian Express report.

The Wednesday report has already be trashed by the government with the army chief Thursday calling it "absolutely stupid".

In the March 13 interview, the army chief had hinted that he was aware that some people were attempting to malign him and "I don't know what their motives are".

"So, you tell him (a journalist) something juicy, it comes on front page and nobody even looks whether there is any truth in it. It is already done. So, you have already thrown muck on somebody," Singh said.