Thaindian News

New Delhi, Jan 17 (IANS) The Indian Air Force (IAF) Monday cleared the role of all its officers in the case of a missing file relating to a $10 billion deal for buying 126 fighter jets, an officer said here Monday.The clean chit seems to have come in a report the IAF submitted to the defence ministry following its inquiry, holding that the file had been submitted by its officers to the ministry officials and it was in their possession when it went missing, the officer said.

The IAF chief, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik, had last week stated that the file that went missing contained nothing “earthshaking” and contained only details of the offsets commitments that the six contending foreign vendors had pledged as part of the contract.

The contract would not be impacted by the missing file case, he had said.

The file had gone missing when a defence ministry official was taking it home for further work on the matter and it was later found lying by the roadside on Khelgaon Marg in south Delhi.

The IAF had ordered a court of inquiry into the incident alongside a separate investigation by the defence ministry into the incident, that took place on the eve of the New Year.

The defence ministry probe is yet to be completed and the investigation was looking into the apparent role of two Indian Administrative Service officers in losing the file.

The fighter jet deal is considered to be highly sensitive in view of the high value of the contract and it has generated a lot of interest in view of the strong competition that the six manufacturers were putting up to win the deal.

US majors Lockheed Martin’s F-16 and Boeings’ F/A-18 are vying for the contract, along with Russian MiG-RAC’s MiG-35, French Dasault’s Rafale, Swedish SAAB’s Gripen and European consortium EADS’ Eurofighter Typhoon.

The contract is expected to be signed later this year.

The IAF needs the medium multi-role combat aircraft to replace its aging Soviet-origin MiG-21s.