In a highly unusual move, Indian police have indicted an Indian army officer, accusing him of killing three civilians in Kashmir in July and staging their deaths as a fake shootout.
The rare independent police inquiry into extrajudicial killings in the troubled region revealed that Indian military officer Captain Bhoopendra Singh, who used the alias Maj Basheer Khan, conspired with two of his informants to kidnap three local workers. It said that they killed the men, planted illegal weapons in the bodies and labeled them “radical terrorists”.
“They deliberately and purposefully chose not to follow SOPs [standard operating procedures], ”Found the police investigation, which lasted several months.
“They planted weapons and materials illegally purchased in their corpses after removing them from their identities and marking them as terrorists in possession of war-like stores,” he said.
The police said the accused officer also deliberately provided false information to colleagues and the elderly.
The three civilians killed include Abrar Ahmad, 16, and a 25-year-old man who was the father of a 15-month-old son.
The accused officer was part of the 62 Rashtriya Rifles, a branch of the Indian army dedicated to counterinsurgency operations in Kashmir. He now faces a trial.
For decades, the Himalayan state has been a focus of conflict between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars for their total territorial control. Last year, the Indian government revoked Kashmir’s limited autonomy, placing the state under full control of the central government, and implemented a paralyzing crackdown on civilians.
Allegations of human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings of civilians have haunted Kashmir for decades, while Indian security agencies seek to crush the ongoing insurgency, which has an alliance with Pakistan. Indian officers posted to Kashmir usually receive rewards for killing militants, whether in the form of medals and promotions, or financial rewards of up to 1.25 million rupees (£ 12,600).
It is very rare for a police or military investigation to follow the murder of an alleged militant and rarely do justice to families alleging manslaughter.
This summer’s incident took place in Shopian, in southern Kashmir, a major apple-producing district that has been the scene of frequent shootings between Indian security forces and insurgents.
The army had initially claimed that three “radical terrorists” were killed in the village of Amshipora during a search operation that resulted in a shootout. He had said the militants were hiding in a “stable of a lonely house in the orchard”.
However, the army’s version began to fade when relatives of three missing people in a remote village in Rajouri district filed a complaint with the police and local activists raised questions on social media.
Guftar Ahmad, a social activist and neighbor of the three dead civilians, said it took the family almost a month to realize they were missing and only submitted a disappearance report to the police on August 10.
Ahmad then found photos of the three workers online and said he realized that his neighbors had been unjustly killed by the military.
“We discussed the matter with all the authorities and, finally, the DNA sample was requested, which took two months to correspond. After 73 days, we were able to exhume the bodies and carry them back to our village, ”he said.
“As things go from the beginning, we hope that justice will be done.”
This is not the first such incident. A shootout staged in 2010 in which army officers killed three civilians and passed them as insurgents led to months of widespread protests, resulting in the death of more than 100 civilians by police and paramilitary forces.
In 2016, police and paramilitary forces were accused of using disproportionate force to contain widespread protests in the region – triggered by the death of a famous militant commander – that led to the blindness of hundreds of boys and adolescents hit by iron pellets.
The Indian army said it was conducting a separate investigation into Shopian’s murders. “The evidence is being examined by the authorities in question in consultation with legal advisors to proceed with the procedure,” said Col. Rajesh Kalia, a Kashmir-based army spokesman. Kalia said the army was “committed to ethical conduct”.
It is not yet decided whether the accused army officer will be tried in a criminal court or in the army court.