An inquiry by the Indian Air Force (IAF) has given its officers a clean chit in the matter pertaining to an incident where a secret file of the IAF —— pertaining to offsets in the `42,000-crore MMRCA (fighter aircraft) acquisition process — was lost allegedly by a ministry of defence (MoD) official before being found on a road in a south Delhi
locality last month. The MoD inquiry into the matter is still on and the report is likely to be submitted by the end of this month. The file had gone missing after the MoD received it from the IAF.
The IAF had recently stated that the file had nothing in it pertaining to national security and that the incident would have no bearing on the MMRCA deal. On Tuesday, MoD sources described speculation — that the MMRCA deal process could face partial or complete cancellation — as being “utterly hypothetical and speculative”.
Earlier this month, the government had stated that it was viewing the recent incident of loss and recovery of a secret defence file “seriously”.
In a statement issued earlier this month, defence minister A.K. Antony had said, “We have viewed the incident seriously. An enquiry is on. As far as the MMRCA (acquisition process) is concerned, I’m clear that every officer has to be careful at every stage (of this process).”
IAF sources had earlier pointed out that the file was marked “secret” but was not in the most sensitive “top secret” category.
Currently, the IAF report on technical evaluations of the MMRCA deal process is under the examination of the MoD. The IAF had earlier completed the flight trials of aircraft of the six global vendors competing for the multi-billion dollar deal.