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Four defence ministry, army officials suspended

Other officers placed under suspension are H C Pant (Staff Officer in the Ordnance Factory Board), Narendra Singh (Assistant Financial Adviser Ministry of Defence) and P Shashi (Assistant in the Army Headquarters), a Defence Ministry spokesman said.

General Chaudhary, who has been suspended, was shown on the clandestinely shot video footage as allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 100,000 and a gold chain as the fictitious company tried to draw him out on selling a tank navigation system.

H C Pant, a key official of the Ordnance Factory Board, was shown allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 60,000 in four instalments for helping the fake company to liaise with top army officers.

The spokesman said the action had been taken after a 'preliminary inquiry'.

He said the ministry would take 'strict action' against any other official if any delinquency of conduct was established in due course.

The action against the officials, who had been shown in secretly taped video cassettes either accepting or showing the willingness to receive bribe, came after a high-level meeting late on Wednesday night chaired by Defence Minister George Fernandes.

Besides Fernandes, the meeting was attended by Defence Secretary Yogendra Narain, Naval Chief Admiral Sushil Kumar and top officials of the army and air force.

Highly placed sources said action was also likely to follow against three other top officers in the Army Headquarters, including another Major General and two Brigadiers.

Chief of Army Staff General S Padmanabhan, who is in Dehradun, has been asked to rush to Delhi apparently to clear the decks for action against the officers.

The sources said three other top officers involved in the video exposure, Maj Gen M S Ahluwalia, Additional Director General (Ordnance), Brig Iqbal Singh (Prospective Procurement Officer) and Col Anil Sehgal, a Director in the Ordnance Services who were all out of the capital, have been asked by Army Headquarters to report back immediately.

Gen Ahluwalia, who looks after Technical Stores is reportedly away in Shimla, while the other two officers are to report back to Army Headquarters by Wednesday afternoon following which they will be handed suspension notices.

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