Retired army officer Lieutenant General H S Panag on Monday endorsed a call for a military coup against the democratically elected government of India should Prime Minister Modi return to power in 2019. He suggested that a coup was a good option if Narendra Modi is reelected as Prime Minister. However, he later deleted his tweet and claimed that he actually meant political revolution.
The retired general does appear to have a certain fascination with coups. While he is endorsing a coup now, 7 years earlier he had endorsed the dubious Indian Express story which claimed that there was a possible coup attempt by the Indian Military under the command of General V.K. Singh. Indian Express had used his endorsement to give credence to its story.
Following the tweets by the veteran, Indian Express had done another story, which was used to justify its dubious coup theory.
Not merely that, Lt Gen Panag had also cast aspersions on the character of General V.K. Singh who is now a Member of Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party. In what he claimed to be an “assessment of a military mind based on reported information in the press”, Lt Gen Panag hinted that the troop movements were a pre-emptive attempt to stop the then UPA government from sacking him. He had posted five tweets after the Indian Express story.
The now-retired Lt General has almost made it a habit of endorsing fake news which targets the Modi government. In October 2017 after the Indian Air Force chopper crashed in the harsh terrain of Arunachal Pradesh, the mortal remains of the martyrs were airlifted. Lt Gen Panag, who once served as a Commanding Officer with the Indian Army shared misleading images of the coffins to insinuate that the government and the army deliberately disrespected the martyrs.
