Devinder Singh in New Delhi on Thursday. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, May 27: A Pakistani artillery shell that exploded near his forward tactical camp in Batalik kicked up stone and dust and shrapnel that broke Brigadier Devinder Singh’s nose in early July 1999.

By then the brigadier was in, what old soldiers call, the “rhythm of the war”, having gauged his terrain, assessed his strengths, got an approximate fix of the enemy positions and having more or less decided on his angles of attack, the diversions and a battleplan for assaults on the heights in his sector.

As he sits behind the wheel of his sedan in South Delhi now with the air-conditioner on — his car is also an office — riffling through a file of documents that he has amassed since he began his crusade for justice, the heat and dust of that war still clouds the memory.

“It’s been a long time, nearly 11 years. I don’t think I’d like to go back to the army now, I’m well-settled since retiring but it’s about honour,” he says in sharp tones.

The soldier still bursts out of the finely cut summer-suit of the corporate executive.

Since retiring — being forced to retire — from the army in 2006, Devinder Singh has been a senior manager with an air cargo firm, heading its logistics hub in the capital.

He believes that after the tribunal’s judgment he should be considered for the notional rank of major general.

A handful of his contemporaries have gone on to be lieutenant generals and even army commanders. But most have retired.

“We were surprised that he should have been passed over,” says one of his friends from the artillery regiment.

Even former army chief, Gen. V.P. Malik, admitted on television today that Devinder Singh “was a fine soldier and I visited him in Batalik to give him a pat”.

Malik is angry that Devinder Singh’s case should raise questions on the capability of the army’s command and control mechanism under his generalship.

“I want the record to be set straight,” says Devinder Singh.

At one point in the war, he was commanding as many as 11 battalions — more than a division-plus of troops that a major general should be leading. “He was treated shoddily,” says his regimental friend.

Devinder Singh still does not know why his superior and the 15 corps commander distorted the reports on him. “We had differences on the operations,” he says but the fudging was “for reasons best known to him (Lt Gen. Kishan Pal)”.

In early 2002 when the entire military was being moved to the northern and western fronts for Operation Parakram, the year-long stand-off with Pakistan following the Parliament attack, Brigadier Devinder Singh told The Telegraph that in his assessment the mobilisation would not lead to war. He was then the army Fellow at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis and was making an assessment few would have dared to give. Subsequent events proved him right.

“He was army commander material,” says his colleague from the regiment to which he belonged (artillery).

By 2002, Devinder Singh had already begun his crusade, filing non-statutory and statutory complaints and then petitioning the high court. Till Wednesday, he was not sure that the long and laborious war that he has waged — all alone — through the bureaucracy of justice would redeem his honour.

Pal reacts

Lt Gen. Pal today said: “I have not fudged any reports or records, I have written one confidential battle performance report about Brigadier Devinder Singh and the report was totally unbiased and true.”