New turn to Dhanush row with GCF officer’s murder

Bhopal: The controversy surrounding use of Chinese tools in Dhanush, India’s first indigenous long-range artillery gun, being manufactured at the Gun Carriage Factory (GCF) in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur, took a new turn after a GCF officer was found “murdered.”

Junior works manager in GCF, Sharada Charan Khatua’s body was recovered in a jungle barely 300 metres from the factory site on Tuesday. Post-mortem reports suggested that Mr Khatua, who had deep injury mark on his head, might have been attacked with a sharp weapon, Jabalpur district superintendent of police Amit Kumar said on Wednesday. Injury marks on some other parts of the body have also been found in the post-mortem, he added.

The deceased was questioned by a CBI team on January 10 in connection with the gun manufacturing controversy and his cell phone was seized by the sleuths of the central investigating agency, according to Mr Kumar. He went missing on January 17. A missing case was filed by his wife on the same night.

A special investigation team (SIT) has been constituted by the Jabalpur police to probe the murder.

“We will seek details from the CBI, probing the gun manufacturing controversy, as to who were on their radar of investigation in the matter. We will not interfere in the CBI probe but will do our separate investigation into the murder”, the SP said.

On June, 2017, the CBI lodged an FIR against a Delhi-based company and some unidentified officers of GCF following inputs that Chinese-made tools, marked as “Made in Germany,” were supplied to GCF for manufacturing Dhanush, the Indigenous version of Bofors artillery gun.

As per the Government of India policy, Chinese products are banned from being used in Indian defence products. GCF was to make six Dhanush artillery guns for defence forces.