INDIAN NAVY SCANDAL, WIFE-SWAPPING WITH FORCE

By Kajol Singh & Avinash Acharya

In the last few months, the navy has been hit by at least four major scandals

• Wife of a marine commando based in Kochi alleges her husband forced her into a ‘wife-swapping network’ in Visakhapatnam. - Navy response: Marital discord.
• Wife of a naval lieutenant based in Karwar alleges she was forced into getting sexually involved with husband’s colleagues. - Navy response: Marital discord.
• Naval officer accused of sending obscene mobile text messages to several women. - Navy response: Officer dismissed after general court martial.
• Naval officer enters into an illicit relationship with the wife of a superior and ‘stealing the affection of a brother-officer’s wife’. - Navy response: Officer dismissed.

One afternoon last month, Malayalam news channels aired the visage of a 25-year-old woman, pixellated to protect her identity. She was the wife of an Indian navy officer, a 26-year-old marine commando, posted at its Kochi base. What she put on record as having undergone in the navy’s precincts in Visakhapatnam, where her husband was posted before being sent to Kochi, shocked audiences and sent seismic waves across the naval establishment. Here’s what she said on TV: “My husband coerced me have to have sex with his superiors and threatened to kill me if I refused.”
Around the same time, another young woman sprang up at the Karwar naval base on the west coast with a story that was quite similar in esse­nce. She too alleged that her hus­band, a lieutenant comman­der, had threatened to kill her if she did not sleep with his colleagues. And, in just a matter of days, a new flank had opened in A.K. Antony’s embattled defence ministry:  charges of wife-swapping in the fighting force that wears pristine white.

Sena Bhavan quickly moved into damage control mode. The prurient nature of the allegations had shaken even the most blase. Still, it seemed to be of a piece. Recently, naval officers had been sacked for sending lewd text messages and for having illicit relations with a superior’s wife. The latest  incide­nts, coming in the backdrop of those sackings, have thrown open the question: is the navy particularly vulnerable to the charge of fostering a licentious environment where everything goes—and ever­ything goes too far? Are lives and careers being built, nurtured and even destroyed in such an environment? Or are the two women  just washing dirty domestic linen, and in the process soiling those whites?

Admittedly, these are only a handful of cases in a large establishment (even though the navy is the smallest of the three defence forces). And it would be unfair to extr­apolate from these cases to make generalisations about a force with two lakh personnel on its rolls. Still, the very fact that two women have stood up to make such charges strikes at the heart of the perception of the navy in the popular imagination—that of gallant men who click their heels at the sight of women, the very emblem of an old world charm.

Unlike the highly visible army and the less visible air force, the Indian navy is perceived as an elite service. This is a view Admiral L. Ramdas (retd), former chief of the navy, readily endorses. “For many cadets passing out of the National Defence Academy, the first choice is to join the navy,” he says. And another officer says, “For everyone, the beach is a place for holidaying. For us, it is our home.” Statements like this, which   serving and retired officers never tire of making, convey the image of men raring for adventure and action on the high seas. But there’s always a limit to adventure: blighted by the spate of dismissals and scandals, the Indian navy seems to have crossed the line, at least in the mind of the public.
Says Ramdas, who, as naval chief, opened the force for women to enrol, “We have set the rules in the service and if an officer is found guilty, we ask him to quit.” During his tenure in the navy, Ramdas had to dismiss an officer for ‘stealing the affections of a brother-officer’s wife’. “We do have a quaint Victorian expression (for sleeping around),” he says. “But when we finally opened the services to women, we did introduce subj­ects on gender sensitivity in the navy for the benefit of our officers and the ranks.” As for stories of wife-swapping, during his tenure, Ram­das says, what he heard was lots of stories of wife-swapping among civilians—never that of wife-swapping among armed forces personnel. But lest the discourse gets reduced to a civilians versus services battle of morality, he says the recent cases must be thoroughly investigated and the women must be heard.

For there are indeed oddballs  in the force, straining at the leash. Lewd text messages, gra­phic mmses, inappropriate beh­a­viour, sexual harassment and mol­estation—the charges flying thick and fast around the Indian navy are indeed of the more crude sort. Four senior officers have been dismissed in the last two months. A fifth, who was dismissed last month for ‘stealing the affections of a brother officer’s wife’, went on to marry her. The navy’s response is that these are aberrations, there are always a few rotten apples, and the entire service must not be tarred for that. But nobody is denying that the charges have dealt a hefty blow to the navy’s image.

In fact, a board of inquiry is on in both the Visakhapatnam and Karwar cases. If the officers involved are found guilty, they face dismissal. For his part, defence minister Antony, who is the head of the three forces, met the two women to obtain a first-hand report from them. On his orders, the cases have been marked top priority.

In the first case (see box), officers in the navy have their own interpretation. Says one: “The accusations levelled by the spouse of the marine commando are serious. There is an inquiry going on into the matter. Without prejudice to the inquiry, it can be stated with conviction that the allegations levelled are baseless, wild and malicious. The allegations levelled by the lady have hurt an entire community and its families. The investigations are pending the deposition of the complainant. She has not been showing any keenness in appearing before the inquiry board and has been postponing it, citing various reasons.” The woman, however, questions the basis of those comments. She asks, “With the navy protecting its flock, can the inquiry be fair?”
Many in the navy do see the two cases as public expressions of domestic discord. In the first case, for example, they are questioning the numerous complaints filed by the officer’s wife. They ask why, a month before her marriage in March 2012, she registered a case against her future husband at the Amboli police station in Mumbai, accusing him of cheating and causing mental harassment to her. In that complaint, she had named some senior officers too. The woman withdrew the case after their marriage, but officers close to the commando say he married her under duress. The marriage came apart soon enough. The woman says this was because of serious misdemeanours by senior officers but they, naturally, deny the charges.

The woman has filed close to five FIRs in Kochi, Mumbai and Delhi. Her husband responded with a written complaint, filed on October 31, 2012, at the Bheemli police station in Visak­hapatnam. It said his wife was sending vulgar messages to his parents and harassing him. Then on January 8 this year, he gave a pre-emptive complaint at the Harbour police station in Kochi, saying he no longer wished to live with his wife. The next day, she says, she found her husband in a compromising position with the wife of a senior officer. This is also set out in her petition to the Harbour police, filed on April 4. Sources close to the commando insist that this could not have happened because the commando and his wife were together attending a counselling session that very day.

The commando also filed another police complaint against his wife on February 14 for abuse and mental harassment. On February 16, his wife arrived in Kochi and went straight to meet his superior and duly complained about him. Strangely, police sources said, the couple stayed in a lodge in the city and not at the naval base. On February 21, she dialled 100 following an  altercation but dropped the matter when the police arrived. The next day, she visited the police station and made a verbal complaint that her husband had taken away her laptop and mobile phones and that these items should be returned to her. On March 11, the commando filed for divorce.

According to sources in the navy and the police, the commando’s family too has filed police cases against the woman. On January 5, his father filed a case in Hissar against his daughter-in-law, alleging that she had been sending him vulgar messages and was harassing him. (She says this was to intimidate her.) On April 4, she  filed another case in Kochi—against her husband and other naval officers,  accusing them of sexual assault when she refused to sleep with his colleagues. Clearly, this wasn’t a marriage that was working.

As charges and counter-charges fly, it is for the board of inquiry to investigate. And quite clearly, they are stu­m­ped. In the Karwar incident, the father of the victim says that not only were dowry demands made, his daughter was asked to sleep around with other officers. The navy vehemently denies this allegation and says it is odd that, after divorce proceedings were initia­ted on April 18, another case is filed on April 26 alleging wife-swapping.
Was this an afterthought after the first case became public, officers ask. But the victim’s father says she was forced to sign divorce papers (see box).

Says Ruby Singh, a former commander and one of the navy’s first women officers, “There is no doubt the navy is a glamorous service. We cherish a certain lifestyle, dignified and disciplined. We do socialise, have parties etc, but that’s not true only of the navy—the army and the air force have similar lifestyles. In fact, for a woman from a civilian background, getting married to a navy man makes her happy and proud.” Having served for more than a decade with the navy, she says the force is nothing like it has been portrayed by the two complainants: “Nobody is forced to attend parties. No impositions are made, as claimed by these woman.”

Like other officers, Ruby Singh says a personal problem has been converted into a big issue by the media. “As far as the naval services are conce­r­ned, it’s easy to attack an institution. It’s easy for both, the media and the ‘vict­ims’, but this is not right and one should not come to this low level. When the issues are personal, they should try to rectify them at the personal level instead of attacking or involving others,” she says.

Countering this are many wives of officers who say that attendance at parties hosted by the navy is mandatory and there is no element of choice. Quite clearly, something is bubbling under the calm surface. It is tough to take on a system, specially one the size of the navy, but two women have bravely thrown a stone. The ongoing inquiries will reveal if it will cause a ripple or sink without a trace.