NEW DELHI – The Navy has been rocked by yet another alleged sex scandal, with an officer’s wife charging her husband with “forcing her to consume alcohol and getting sexually involved” with his colleagues at the strategic Karwar naval base in coastal Karnataka.
Defence minister A K Antony, already perturbed by the flurry of such cases in recent times, has ordered a swift probe into the case. He also told the naval commanders’ conference on Tuesday that “sternest possible action” should be taken against personnel who indulge in such “inappropriate behaviour” and “tarnish the image and prestige of the armed forces”.?
The Navy is already grappling with the allegations made by an officer’s wife recently when she claimed molestation by her husband’s superiors as well as “wife-swapping” episodes at the Kochi naval base. The force also recently sacked two commander-rank officers in Mumbai – one for having an extra-marital affair and the other for sending lewd text messages to several women.
Even the recent dismissal from service of three other naval officers for divulging classified information on social networking websites had a strong underlying theme of “moral turpitude” attached to the entire affair.
The Navy promised to take “stringent action” if the allegations were found to be true in the Karwar case. The woman, who met Antony with her complaint, alleged her husband, a Lt-Commander (equivalent to a Major in the Army) posted at the Naval Ship Repair Yard at the Karwar base, had “forced me to get sexually involved with his colleagues and consume alcohol”.
The woman, an MBA who has now shifted to her parents’ home, accused her husband of physical and mental torture as well as escalating dowry demands. The woman’s family apparently paid Rs 65 lakh as dowry when the two had got married in February, 2012.
But things got messy soon after, with the woman even “being forced to attempt suicide” and her parents getting thrashed by the accused. The officer, in fact, had allegedly also threatened to upload her nude pictures on the internet if she disclosed his deeds to anyone.
Sex scandals are not new to the Navy, with many officers indulging in “extra-marital affairs” while being posted abroad for months. A prominent case was that of a senior commander-level officer involved in the $2.33 billion acquisition of aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov from Russia, Sukhjinder Singh, who was sacked in 2011.
Though there was talk of “a honey-trap” after his sexually explicit photographs with a Russian woman had surfaced, the Navy had dubbed it “baseless” then.
