The Ghosts of Pathribal

Several questions remain unanswered in this 14-year-old fake encounter case

As Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah completed five years in office earlier this January, his party National Conference seemed to be headed for a split with the Congress party, its coalition partner in the state, due to sharp differences over Abdullah’s plan to create 700 administrative units. Abdullah’s government may eventually survive the split, but the Indian Army’s clean chit to its men in an infamous fake encounter case is something that has put the Chief Minister in a tight spot.

The Army on 24 January exonerated five officers of its 7 RR unit, accused of killing five innocent civilians in a fake encounter 14 years ago in Pathribal in south Kashmir. On the eve of the then American President Bill Clinton’s visit to India, suspected terrorists of the Lashkar- e-Toiba gunned down 35 Sikhs in Chittisinghpura, not very far from Pathribal. Five days later, the Army held a press conference and said that it had, in a joint operation with the J&K police, eliminated five ‘foreign mercenaries’ responsible for the massacre. The villagers suspected that the Army had killed five civilians who had been picked up from nearby villages in the two days before the so-called encounter. After a major hue and cry, the bodies of those the Army had killed were exhumed. They turned out to be the badly-charred bodies of the same civilians.

In 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a charge sheet against the five Army officers, accusing them of ‘cold-blooded murder’. The Army tried to shield its men by arguing that they were immune to trial under the provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The case finally went to the Supreme Court in 2012, and it gave the Army a choice between trying its men on its own, or in a civilian court. The Army said it would initiate court-martial proceedings against the five officers.

On 24 January, the army gave a clean chit to its men. “The evidence recorded could not establish a prima facie case against any of the accused persons,” a defence spokesperson told the media.

The Army has not, however, specified what led the court to reach the conclusion that it did. As a result, many questions remain unanswered. For example, does the Army still believe that the five men were involved in the Chittisinghpura massacre? In July 2012, a handler of the Mumbai terror attack, Abu Jundal, extradited from Saudi Arabia, reportedly named Muzammil, a senior Lashkar operative, as the mastermind of the Chittisinghpura massacre. Also, in December 2000, Indian security agencies picked up two Pakistani nationals, Suhail Malik and Waseem Ahmed, on charges of involvement in that massacre. But even after years of trial, Indian security agencies could produce no evidence against them in the court, resulting in their acquittal in August 2011 by the Delhi High Court.

Abdullah has said he will raise the issue with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he visits Kashmir early next month. But Manmohan Singh should not wait for Abdullah to raise this issue. He has maintained in the past that there will be ‘zero tolerance’ against human rights violations in J&K. It is time for him to show that he means what he says.

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