Indian army acts against two officers over Kashmir killings

AFP

SRINAGAR, India - An Indian army officer has been suspended and another removed from his command after police blamed the two for the killing of three Muslim civilians in Kashmir, the army said Sunday.

Federal police dispell Kashmiri protestors throwing stones during a protest in Srinagar

The move against the two officers -- a major and a colonel -- comes a day before India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will pay a two-day visit to the Muslim-insurgency hit region, where anti-India sentiment runs high. Colonel D K Pathania was commanding the unit 4-Rajput, allegedly responsible for the fake encounter, while J&K police named Major Upender Kumar as the main accused. The Army had last week ordered a probe after a police report named Major Upender for allegedly luring the trio with a job offer and gunning them down for rewards and promotion.

''Colonel Pathania has been asked not to leave the Valley till inquiry is completed,'' said Army's Northern Command chief Lt-Gen B S Jaiswal. He was about to join his unit, which has relocated to Meerut. Pathania is the second officer to be removed from the command after 33 Rashtriya Rifles' Col. Gloria was removed for allegedly killing three boys in Dudipora-Handwara in North Kashmir in February 2006. The Army said that day they killed three infiltrators in the Machil sector along the Line of Control, but later claimed they were Pakistani terrorists.

Mohamad Shafi, Shehzad Ahmed and Riyaz Ahmed, all residents of Nadihal in Baramulla district, were allegedly lured to the border area and shot dead. The three civilians were killed at the end of April, India's military had said, when it foiled an infiltration by militants along the Line of Control, the de facto border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. But the families of the men in the northern district of Baramulla said the dead men were "innocent" relatives who had disappeared three days before. After their bodies were exhumed the three men were confirmed to be those killed in what is now suspected to have been a gunbattle staged by the Indian army on April 30. Following complaints from the victims' relatives, a Territorial Army jawan and two others were arrested.

Indian authorities have ordered a probe into the incident. "The colonel has been removed from the command. The second officer (a major) has been suspended as of now and an inquiry has been ordered," Lieutenant General B.S. Jaiswal said in Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's summer capital. Local police investigating the case have named the two officers as the "main accused" for staging the April 30 gunbattle. The police have also arrested four more residents, including a Kashmiri member of the Indian army, for luring the three men to the de facto border to work as labourers for the military. The two army officers have yet to be handed over to police. The police inquiry relied heavily on the statement of the jawan of the 161 Battalion of the Territorial Army in Gauntmullah, Baramulla. Jawan Abbass told the investigators about the alleged involvement of Major Upinder. He was one of the three persons arrested.

The Army action came after Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah met senior officials of the Army and police at a meeting on Sunday. He has made a strong pitch for amending the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to make it more transparent. The allegedly staged gunbattle has raised doubts about the Indian army's claims of other skirmishes between soldiers and rebels, Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has said. Human rights activists accuse the security forces of killing civilians in gunbattles faked for rewards and promotions. Abdullah has been campaigning for the repeal of India's Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives soldiers wide powers to shoot, arrest and search suspects and is widely detested by Kashmiris. "Unfortunately, under the AFSPA, the army is the judge, the jury and the hangman," Abdullah said. Kashmir is in the grip of a 20-year-old insurgency against Indian rule that has so far left more than 47,000 people dead by an official count.