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Indian Air Force officer may be dismissed in Mi-17 friendly-fire incident
The verdict of General Court Martial (GCM), however, is yet to be confirmed by Indian Air Force (IAF) chief Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari, said one of the officials asking not to be named
A military court has recommended the dismissal of a group captain for lapses that led to the shooting down of a Mi-17 V5 helicopter in a friendly-fire incident near Srinagar on February 27, 2019, the day Pakistan air force launched its jets to target Indian installations in Jammu and Kashmir in response to an Indian airstrike on a terror camp in Pakistan’s Balakot, officials familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Group Captain Suman Roy Chowdhury was then the chief operations officer of the Srinagar air base.
The verdict of General Court Martial (GCM), however, is yet to be confirmed by Indian Air Force (IAF) chief Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari, said one of the officials cited above, asking not to be named.
The IAF chief is expected to weigh in on the sentence awarded by the GCM only after the Punjab and Haryana high court disposes of a matter related to the Mi-17 incident, said another official, who also asked not to be named.
Also Read: Armed Forces Tribunal stays action in matter related to Mi-17 friendly fire incident till Sept 30
In March, the court ruled that the GCM could deliver its verdict with the rider that it would not be implemented till the disposal of the case.
A surface-to-air missile brought down the Russian-origin utility helicopter and left six IAF personnel onboard and a civilian on ground dead, raising questions about whether ground crew, including air traffic controllers, had followed standard operating procedures.
The IAF was on its highest alert the day the helicopter was brought down in friendly fire.
It expected Pakistan to respond to the unprecedented peacetime, cross-border airstrike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror camp in Balakot on February 26, 2019.
The IAF’s Balakot strike was in retaliation to the Pakistan-backed Pulwama suicide attack in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed on February 14, 2019.
The Mi-17 was brought down by the missile around the same time Wing Commander (now Group Captain) Abhinandan Varthaman shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet during a dogfight over the Line of Control (LoC).
The GCM also awarded severe reprimand to Wing Commander Shyam Naithani, who was in charge of the air traffic control at the base, in the Mi-17 friendly-fire incident, the officials said.
The military court found Chowdhury guilty on several charges including violating a 2017 IAF directive that made it mandatory for all aircraft flying in a pre-designated airspace to operate with Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) devices to prevent friendly-fire incidents, allowing the Mi-17 to take off without the IFF in operation, and asking the missile unit to engage the aircraft, the officials said.
“Over the last two to three years, there has been a definite shift in demanding accountability from officers involved in operations. Punishment meted out for lapses has been swift and exemplary,” said Air Vice Marshal Anil Golani (retd), additional director general, Centre for Air Power Studies.
The GCM has ordered the group captain’s dismissal months after the government sacked three IAF officers in August 2022 for lapses that led to the accidental firing of a BrahMos missile into Pakistan on March 9, 2022, after a court of inquiry held them responsible for deviating from standard operating procedures.
One of the officers sacked was a group captain who was in charge of the BrahMos missile battery when the weapon was launched from a base in the western sector during routine inspection and maintenance of the system.
