The men – workers Abrar Ahmad Khan, Imtiyaz Ahmad and Abrar Ahmad Yousuf, who had left their homes in search of work – were killed in an army operation in July. Local police recovered live pistols and cartridges from the scene, and a special investigative unit said the army had initially portrayed the victims as “militants”.
In a statement on Sunday, police accused Captain Bhoopendra Singh and another of kidnapping and killing the men, saying that they staged the murders as a false military encounter and “planted illegally acquired weapons and material in their corpses after removing them. their identities and labeled them as radical terrorists. ”
The police added that Singh chose “deliberately and purposefully” not to follow standard operating procedures in Kashmir.
The Indian Army has not indicated whether the captain will be tried under civilian jurisdiction or in a military court. Under an emergency law enacted in Jammu and Kashmir since 1990, soldiers in the Indian army cannot be tried in civil courts under ordinary jurisdiction without the permission of the federal government.
Prosecutions against army officers for alleged offenses and abuses are rare, however, and similar allegations of staged incidents have been made in the past, making the investigation and the charges even more unusual.