new Delhi: Union minister and former Army chief Gen VK Singh, has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to order a high-level inquiry into the alleged planting of “fallacious” stories on a newspaper about an attempted coup by the Army in 2012.

General Singh said that two ministers from the Manmohan Singh-led UPA II government were involved in the conspiracy.

The news report in question is dated April 4, 2012. The Indian Express carried a three-deck banner headline on its front page that read, “The January night Raisina Hill was spooked: Two key Army units moved towards Delhi without notifying Govt”.

The report did not mention the word “coup” but said how “key Army units moved towards Delhi without notifying Govt” and that there were “so many questions around the movement”.

Singh, who was the chief of the Army then, said he had written about the issue in 2012 to then home minister, urging for an investigation “needs to be investigated because this is treason”.

“You cannot accuse the armed forces of a thing like this. However, nothing happened to those complaints I sent to the MHA,” he said.

“I wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, stating that this needs to be investigated at the highest level to expose these people, who have committed treason against the country. Let's leave it to the judgement of the Prime Minister,” the Union minister said.

Taking to social media platform Facebook, Singh said that those behind the entire act were “willing to openly destroy the institution of the Army to achieve personal objectives”.

Calling for a strict action against those responsible for this, Singh further said, “Though six years have passed, there should be a detailed enquiry and the guilty (should be) brought to book. The age-old saying that truth must always prevail is timeless. It’s a shame so many people who played games and falsified news, are even today not accountable.”

Singh’s remarks come a day after the BJP accused the previous government of allegedly leaking to the media an inaccurate story about a coup. In a press conference, BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao sought to know the identity of the minister who leaked the story.