Shekhar Gupta’s The Print, which has been called out in the past for romanticising treason and spinning sensational stories about the Chinese aggression in Doklam, today got called out by the Indian Army for wrongly citing that a note was written by the Indian Army.
Reference to Indian Army is factually incorrect, Indian Army hasn’t written note as mentioned in the article ‘Army fears US could leak data to Pakistan if India-US sign military secrecy pact’.@PIB_India @SpokespersonMoD @ThePrintIndia @vipulbansal2005https://t.co/PthbrJCXO1
— ADG PI – INDIAN ARMY (@adgpi) July 26, 2018
In the article titled ‘Army fears US could leak data to Pakistan if India-US sign military secrecy pact’, The Print mentions that the Indian Army has written a note to the government asking if it would be wise to sign the COMCASA (Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement), which means to provide the legal framework for the transfer of communication security equipment from the US to India that would facilitate “interoperability” between their forces — and potentially with other militaries that use US-origin systems for secured data links.
Refuting the claims, the Indian Army, through the Twitter handle of Additional Directorate General of Public Information (ADG PI) said that the above reference by The Print is incorrect and that the Indian Army has not written any such note to the government.
Earlier, in January, OpIndia had called out how The Print had repeated on the oft-repeated lie on the Doklam stand-off. In the article, the author had put across various insinuations and omitted information and assertions which were far from the truth. But then, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. Prior to starting The Print, when Shekhar Gupta was the Editor-in-chief of Indian Express in 2012, he had written series of articles where he had claimed that the Indian Army was making ‘unauthorised troop movements’ towards the capital and the Raisina Hill (which houses the Home Ministry) was ‘spooked’. This baseless news also earned Gupta the monicker of ‘Coupta’.
