Mumbai:
How senior Army officers pulled rank to first sanction and then corner flats in Adarsh Society is being studied carefully by the Army now. The core of the controversy is that the building, meant for war widows and veterans, has been divided up between politicians, bureaucrats and army officers at massively discounted prices.
Sources say that it's clear that the pivotal force of the scam was TK Kaul, who retired as Major General in 2006 and owns a flat in the 31-storey building in Mumbai's Colaba area. Adarsh Society towers over several key defence installations in the area - hence, it could not have been developed without sanction from top officers.
Kaul, who runs a security company in Mumbai now, seems to have gone underground.
But in 2000, when the proposal for Adarsh Society was floated, Kaul was the Sub-Area Commander at Colaba.
In 2001, he attended a course for Brigadiers at the National Defence College - standard procedure meant he should have then gone on to command a division after such a course.
Instead, in 2002, he was brought back as Army Commander to Mumbai, presumably so that he could push through Army clearances for Adarsh Society.
In return for enabling the project, sources say, he was given plum postings in Mumbai.
In addition to the flat that he owns, Kaul has power of attorney for two others.
On record, so far, 62 of the 104 flats were allotted to retired and serving Army officers.
Among them, four successive commanders of the Pune-Based Southern Army Command who have all been allotted Adarsh Society flats. The post they held meant that they were the final authority for all clearances given by the army to Adarsh Society.
NDTV has now learnt that in August this year, the Army and the Navy wrote separately to the Central government complaining that Adarsh Society was a security risk - as a high-rise, it offered civilians a vantage view of critical navy and Army installations.