Thamburaj, one of the seniormost officers of the armed forces to have been indicted by a CBI inquiry, was the Southern Army commander based in Pune when the agreement with the company was allegedly signed.

In a release, CBI said Thamburaj and Nayyar had “shown favour to M/s Kalpatru in the matter of property at Bungalow No 8A, Lothian Road... and measuring area 0.96 acres of B-3 defence land at Pune cantonment”.

Thamburaj and Nayyar, the release said, had “settled this matter out of court in spite of all the verdict in favour of army which is a gross misconduct on the part of public servants.

“...Thamburaj and Nayyar by ignoring existing rules and policies, violating the terms of lease entered into by ministry of defence, caused pecuniary advantage to M/s Kalpatru Builders to the tune of Rs 46 crore without any public interest.”

Investigating officer Rajpal Singh said “pre-decided norms” were violated. “A lot of construction has already been done on this land by the builder. We have seized a large number of files from the office of Kalpataru Builders. From the residences of Lt Gen Thamburaj and S R Nayyar, we have seized some property papers and other documents. All these are under scrutiny now,” Singh said.

At Lt Gen Thamburaj’s home in Fatima Nagar, a teenage boy told The Indian Express on Tuesday that no one was in. Thamburaj was GOC-in-C, Southern Command between October 2007 and December 2008, and became vice-chief of the Army in January 2009.