5 Indicted By The CBI

By Seikholen Thomsong

Newspapers report the indictment of 5 armymen for killing innocents in operations post Chattisinghpura massacre three years back.

The five officers have now become cause of shame to all the men in uniform. Many of the officers of the Indian Army that I know of work honestly and earn their countrymen's respect. It is unfortunate some unscrupulous skunks like these have to drag the name of the organisation down in this way. It is not that all the armymen are so hungry for success or personal glory that they indulge in this. Most of us earn it the hard honest and difficult way.

The Govt should not hesitate in giving them any punishment that they deserve. In fact they should ne given the severest of punishments - court martials, cashiering or demotion etc may be too mild. If they are left scot free, it would set a bad precedence to all in the country.

Mr PM kindly take prompt action.

The new item is given as under for your reference

"New Delhi, Apr 28 : After three years of probe into the killing of innocent civilians on suspicion of being involved in Chattisinghpora massacre of 36 Sikhs in Jammu and Kashmir, the CBI indicted five army personnel for staging a fake encounter to kill the civilians and gave a clean chit to the State police.The CBI, which was handed over the case in January 2003 by the State Government, alleged officials and jawans of Seven Rashtriya Rifles Brig Ajay Saxena, Lt Col Brahendra Pratap Singh, Maj Saurabh Sharma, Maj Amit Saxena and Subedar Idrees Khan had staged a fake encounter and killed five innocent civilians labelling them as terrorists responsible for carnage of Sikhs in Chittisinghpora in South Kashmir.

The 18-page CBI chargesheet said that after the gunning down of Sikh community members, the army unit operating in the area was under "tremendous psychological pressure-to show results because there was allegation of inefficiency and ineffectiveness on their part.The CBI alleged the army personnel entered into a criminal conspiracy to pick up the same innocent persons and stage manage an encounter to create the impression that the militants responsible for the Chittisinghpora killings had been neutralised.

During CBI investigation, the army had claimed that it was the police which had given them the information about the presence of militants, a statement denied by local police officers.The CBI found that Subedar Khan had handed over five dead bodies to Station House Officer Achchabal with a Handing over Memo mentioning the names of three killed persons as Pakistani nationals and the other two as unknown.The accused army men also showed fake recovery of arms and ammunition from the five deceased after obtaining signatures of two witnesses on blank papers. PTI".