Fayaz Bukhari
SRINAGAR, June 29: The Army will try its five officers, involved in killing of 5 civilians in a fake encounter at Pathribal in the South Kashmir district of Anantnag in March 2000, in a military court.
The Army moved an application in the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Srinagar to express their willingness to try the accused Army officers in military court.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Srinagar, Rajeev Gupta, passed an order on Wednesday to allow the Army to proceed against the accused officers in a military court.
“In view of the options having been exercised by competent military authority for trial by Army court, criminal court lacks jurisdiction to try the case initiated on the basis of an FIR registered on February 14, 2003,” said the court order.
The CJM directed: “The charge sheet filed along with its accompanying documents be transferred to the competent military authority through duly authorized officer being Colonel Arun Awasthy unit 7 Rashtriya Riffles who is present in the court.”
It may be mentioned here that on May 1, the Supreme Court had given the army eight weeks to decide whether the accused officers be tried by a regular criminal court or face a court-martial.
Five Army men – Brigadier Ajay Saxena, Lt Col Brajendra Pratap Singh, Major Sourabh Sharma, Major Amit Saxena and Subedar Idrees Khan – were charge-sheeted in 2006 by the CBI for killing five civilians after dubbing them as militants.
These civilians who were picked up from various places in South Kashmir, soon after the massacre of Sikhs at village Chattisinghpora in district Anantnag during the then US President Bill Clinton’s India visit were killed in a “fake encounter” at village Pathribal 5 days later. They were dubbed as militants of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) who were responsible for the massacre of the Sikhs. The bodies were charred beyond recognition and they were buried in the Pathribal forest where they were killed. The five victims were local civilians Juma Khan, 53, Bashir Ahmad Bhat, 26, Juma Khan, 38, Mohammad Yousuf Malik, 38, and Zahoor Ahmad Dalal.
Later some of the families claimed that the Pathribal victims could be their missing relatives picked up by the security forces shortly after the Chattisinghpora massacre. This led to protests in Anantnag’s Brakpora area and security forces fired upon them leaving 10 civilians dead.
After the protests, the State Government ordered exhumation of the bodies and their DNA samples were sent to forensic laboratories in Hyderabad where it was found that the samples were fudged. The case was handed over to the CBI which then charge sheeted the Army officers. But none of them was punished.
As per the CBI investigation, five civilians were killed and branded as militants days after 35 Sikhs were massacred in a nearby Chattisingpora village.
The CBI filed the charge-sheet against the accused Army officers in 2006 but the Army contested maintainability of the charge-sheet claiming that prior sanction from the Central Government was required under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which provides immunity against prosecution to Army personnel deployed in disturbed areas like Jammu and Kashmir.
The Army’s plea was rejected by all courts, including the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, till the Supreme court partly agreed with it saying prior sanction was required for prosecution and directed the Army to decide whether it will try the accused personnel in GCM or in the civilian court.
The relatives of victims are disappointed over the development of Army court marshalling the Army men. One of the victim Jumma Khan’s son, Rashid Khan said that they have no faith in court martial. “We had lot of hope with the apex court of the country but we are disappointed over the decision”, said Khan adding that it was better that the Army officers should have been tried in a Civil court. “Trying of these Army officers in military court is crude joke for us”, he added.
The National Conference today welcomed the decision of the Army to try its five officers in General Court Martial. “It’s a welcome step but we demand that the proceedings and results be made transparent so that there is no scope for any allegations or feeling of a cover up” said Tanvir Sadiq, the Spokesman of the National Conference.
“People may have diverse opinions about the developments, but if they are ready to make sure the proceedings go ahead and guilty are brought to book and punished in a transparent manner, we think it’s a positive development and should be taken positively,” said Tanvir
“Some people may have brought a bad name but Army is an institution that has brought laurels to the country and as such we expect exemplary punishment to the alleged accused officers without any further delay” said Tanvir.
Reiterating the stand of the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Sadiq said “Pathribal, Machil are the events that have cast very long shadow that won’t go away if we continue to ignore them or not punish the guilty”. Time has come to revoke the Act from the peaceful areas of the State.
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