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Bathinda military station firing: Witness jawan arrested for killing four soldiers
Investigators say it was a premeditated plan where Desai Mohan stole an INSAS rifle and 28 bullets to eliminate four gunners from artillery unit to avenge harassment; weapon, six rounds of LMG were recovered from sewage pit in compound
An army jawan, Desai Mohan, who till last week was the sole witness of the killing of four army personnel at Bathinda military station on April 12, has been arrested for murdering the soldiers.
Investigators said it was a premeditated plan where Mohan stole an INSAS rifle and 28 bullets to eliminate four gunners from an artillery unit.
In a joint press conference, Bathinda senior superintendent of police (SSP) Gulneet Khurana and Colonel Animesh Sharan from the Bathinda military station said that the accused has confessed to turning the gun on his colleagues to avenge the humiliation and harassment meted out to him by them.
They said it was early to confirm the kind of harassment the accused was facing at the hands of the four soldiers.
Evading a reply if the accused had filed any complaint against the four soldiers in the past, Colonel Sharan said: “It is all a matter of internal investigation.”
He said during the ongoing internal investigation, it was found that Mohan had stolen an INSAS rifle, its 20 cartridges and another eight bullets of a light machine gun (LMG) on April 10. Following a complaint of weapon and ammunition going missing, the military base was on high alert and now the matter is being investigated under a court of inquiry (CoI), he added.
Accused hid stolen rifle, ammo for two days
“He hid the weapon and ammunition at an isolated spot of the army base for two days before targeting his colleagues early in the morning on April 12. After the murders, Mohan was among others questioned. He was handed over to the police on Sunday,” Colonel Sharan said.
SSP Khurana said a police team recovered the rifle and six live rounds of the LMG from a sewage pit in the compound.
“We recovered 19 empty shells of the INSAS from the crime spot. After committing the crime, Mohan dumped the rifle and ammunition in a pit and they were found on the basis of information shared by the accused to the investigators. Mohan was repeatedly changing his statements during questioning by the army officials and then to the police. He remained under focused questioning,” the SSP said.
Mohan was among the four jawans summoned for questioning by the police on Sunday.
Khurana said that during questioning, Mohan said he was facing repeated harassment from the victims.
“After committing the crime, he tried to mislead the army by concocting a story about two unidentified men in kurta-pyjamas and masks. But his lie was detected. We are conducting a scientific probe to make it a watertight case,” the SSP said.
Mohan was produced in a local court which sent him in police remand till April 20, said Bathinda Cantonment station house officer Gurdeep Singh.
Accused, victims deployed at officers’ mess
The four soldiers — Sagar Banne, Kamlesh R, Santosh Nagaral, and Yogeshkumar J — were shot dead on April 12 as they slept in their rooms near the officers’ mess of the heavily guarded military base.
The deceased and the accused were colleagues at the mess.
According to the first information report (FIR) at the cantonment police station on April 12, Mohan claimed he had spotted two masked men in white kurta-pyjama near the crime scene.
The case was registered on the complaint of Major Ashutosh Shukla of 80 Medium Regiment, who quoted Mohan’s information that one of the assailants was carrying an INSAS (Indian Small Arms System) rifle and the other an axe.
Gaps in jawan’s account to police
The FIR stated that an INSAS rifle and a magazine with 28 cartridges had gone missing from the army unit and was likely to have been used by the suspects in the attack. The rifle and magazine were recovered from the pit later the same day.
A day after the crime, HT was first to repsort of Punjab Police finding gaps in the eyewitness account.
Mohan had stated that he saw two men carrying a rifle and an axe, but the autopsy of the four jawans did not reveal any sharp-edged weapon injury.
Additional director general of police (ADGP), Bathinda Range, SPS Parmar had said that the jawan (Mohan) was questioned as it did not go well why one of the two assailants was carrying an axe when it was not used to attack the soldiers. “Moreover, no other person on duty spotted the movement of the men in civvies in the secured campus. There was no security breach or attempt of intrusion reported,” Parmar added.
