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Indian police on Sunday charged an army officer and two of his associates with stabbing three Kashmiri workers killed in an organized shooting to prove they were armed fighters.
The deaths of the three workers in July caused a stir in Indian-administered Kashmir.
A police statement said Captain Bhupendra Singh had been charged with murder, conspiracy and other crimes. He is now in military custody. And his accomplice is in the custody of two “source” civilian police.
A police statement issued Sunday night said the officer and his two accomplices had snatched the identities of the dead and illegally brandished weapons and other objects at them, calling them armed terrorists.
In September, the Indian Army acknowledged that the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) had led to the withdrawal of troops. The Special Powers Act absolved the army from killing civilians.
After the incident, the army initially claimed that the three men were killed in a shootout in the village of Amshipora in southern Kashmir. Three weapons were found in his possession. Then their bodies were quickly buried in a distant border area.
A month after the incident, relatives of those killed in the remote mountainous region of Rajouri identified the three men through a photo posted on social media. The family said the three men were only looking for work in an apple orchard in Kashmir.
Ibrar Ahmed was one of three people killed in the shooting. His older brother, Javed Ahmed, 25, said his family had lost peace and sleep in pursuit of justice.
‘One of them is my brother and the other two are my cousins. We don’t know if we will get justice, ”said Javed, a resident of the Rajouri district of Jammu.
“We still don’t know the whole story, we have to tell the whole truth behind this barbaric incident, in which we lost three young members of our family,” he told Al Jazeera.
Rare investigations
As the controversy spread, the Indian army and police launched a separate investigation into the incident. The Indian army has more than five lakhs of troops in Kashmir. Police say they were only notified after the alleged shootings. This is usually a violation of the rules.
The military said last week that the recording of evidence in the case had ended. Now the following steps will be taken.
The bodies of the three men were exhumed in September and returned to their families after DNA testing.
The statement said that a local court had asked the army whether the accused army officer would be tried in a civil court or in a military court martial.
Since the armed insurgency against the Indian government began in 1990, an emergency law has been enacted in Kashmir under the AFSPA which states that Indian troops deployed in the region cannot be tried in civilian courts unless New Delhi wishes.
No such permission has been granted in the last 30 years, despite numerous requests from the police to investigate various activities of the security forces.
Rajouri-based human rights activist Guftar Ahmad Chowdhury told Al Jazeera that the trial of the three men was a “long battle”.
“We are waiting for the trial to begin. It is a fight for justice for the families, which is only the beginning.”
Human rights activists in Kashmir pointed out that the army had killed many civilians in the past in shootings branded as “rebels” for various economic benefits and medals.
A 2010 police investigation revealed that the army killed three civilians in an organized shooting in the Machil area near the Line of Control in the Kupwara district. The three men were led to Machile by trickery. Later, the military killed them under the label of ‘militant’.
Thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in the decades-long conflict.
Source: Al Jazeera
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