Indian police on Sunday accused an army officer and two associates of planting weapons on the bodies of three workers killed in Kashmir to make it appear they were armed fighters in an organized shooting.
Their deaths in July sparked a furor in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Captain Bhoopendra Singh has been charged with murder, conspiracy and other crimes, according to the police statement. He is now in military detention. The two civilian “sources”, who were with him at the time, are in police custody.
A police statement issued Sunday night said the officer and two others “placed weapons and illegally acquired material on their bodies after stripping them of their identities and labeling them as hardcore terrorists in possession of war tents.”
In September, the Indian military admitted that its soldiers had exceeded the powers of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which grants soldiers impunity for killing civilians.
The army had initially claimed that the three men were killed in a shootout in the village of Amshipora in southern Kashmir, and that three weapons were found on them. The bodies were hastily buried in a remote border area.
The men’s families in the remote mountainous area of Rajouri identified them a month later from photos circulated on social media. The families said the three had only been looking for work in the apple orchards of Kashmir.
Javaid Ahmad, 25, whose younger brother Ibrar Ahmad was among the three people killed in the shooting, said the family “has lost peace and sleep in pursuit of justice.”
“One of them was my brother and the other two were cousins. We don’t know if we will get justice or not, ”said Ahmad, who lives in the Rajouri district of Jammu.
“We still do not know the whole story, we must be told the whole truth behind the barbarous act in which we lost three young members of the family,” he told Al Jazeera.
Rare investigations
The controversy sparked rare separate investigations by the Indian army, which has more than 500,000 troops in Kashmir, and the police, who said they were only informed of the alleged shooting after the killings that violated normal rules of engagement.
The military said last week only that the recording of evidence in the case had been completed and that action would be taken.
Following the investigation, the bodies of the three men were exhumed in September and returned to their families after DNA testing.
A local court asked the army whether the accused officer should be tried in civilian court or subjected to a military court martial, according to the statement.
According to AFSPA, an emergency law enforced in Kashmir since 1990 when an armed rebellion broke out against the Indian government, Indian soldiers deployed to the region cannot be tried in a civil court unless New Delhi agrees.
No such permit has been granted in the last 30 years, despite dozens of requests from the police following investigations into the actions of the security forces.
Guftar Ahmad Chowdhary, a Rajouri-based rights activist, told Al Jazeera that justice for the three men is a “long battle.”
“We are waiting when the trial begins. For the families, it is only the fight for justice that has started now ”.
Human rights activists in Kashmir point out that in the past the army has killed many civilians in organized shootings after calling them “rebels” to claim monetary benefits and medals.
In 2010, a police investigation revealed that the army killed three civilians in a shootout in the Machil area near the Line of Control in the Kupwara district. The three civilians were lured to Machil and killed there before being labeled “militants” by the army.
Tens of thousands of people, mainly civilians, have died in the decades-long conflict.
Rifat Fareed contributed to the Srinagar report
.
