Henderson Brook report: Defence Ministry refrains from comments

NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Defence today refrained from commenting on the contents of the classified Henderson Brook report, portions of which have been uploaded on the Internet by an Australian journalist.

The ministry said it has come across news reports which state that Maxwell has released sections, allegedly from the Henderson Brooks Report on the India-China conflict of 1962.

"Given the extremely sensitive nature of the report, which is of current operational value, it is reiterated that the government has classified it as a top secret document and, as such, it would not be appropriate to comment on the contents uploaded by (journalist) Neville Maxwell on the web," it said in a statement.

Maxwell, who was based in India at that time and reported extensively on the war, said on his website that he always had access to the report but waited for it to be declassified.

He decided to put out a large part of it in the public domain because of India's unwillingness to release it, he has said.