Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 11

A section of locally based ex-servicemen have flayed the manner in which 75-year old medically unwell, Wing Commander CK Sharma (retd), treasurer of the Indian Ex-Servicemen’s Movement (IESM),was picked up by the Haryana Police from his Gurgaon residence on March 10.In a statement issued here today, Brig Harwant Singh, member of IESM’s governing body, said the retired officer was picked up in the night on flimsy charges filed by a disgruntled former functionary of IESM about some alleged financial discrepancy in the organisation’s accounts.He said it was a three-year-old case, which was investigated twice by the same police force and had been dismissed both times on the grounds that the charges were untenable. Even though the case was in the Punjab and Haryana High Court for anticipatory bail against the denial of the same by the lower court, and it was verbally conveyed by the court on 10 March to the defendants’ lawyer that no pre-emptive action was to be taken till the hearing on 11 March, and the same was conveyed to the police, he claimed.Yet the police arrested the veteran in a very humiliating manner, who was not even allowed to make phone calls or change from his night suit into normal clothes, he said, adding that this act seemed to be coercing ex-servicemen to close down their ongoing agitation over rectification of enormous anomalies in the one rank—one pension formula.