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Machil fake encounter case: Life sentence for 6 armymen confirmed
The army’s Northern Command GOC on Monday confirmed the life sentence awarded to six army personnel, including two officers, in a 2010 fake encounter.
The army’s Northern Command GOC on Monday confirmed the life sentence awarded to six army personnel, including two officers, in a 2010 fake encounter.
According to an Udhampur-based spokesperson, General officer commanding in chief (GOC-in-C), Northern Command, lieutenant general DS Hooda, confirmed the sentence of a summary general court martial in the Machil encounter case. The convicted men include a colonel-rank officer.
A military court had sentenced the soldiers, including two officers, to life imprisonment in November 2014 for the staged killing of three Kashmiri civilians and passing it off as an anti-militancy operation in Machil in 2010. “The verdict requires sanction by the commander, which has come in,” an official said.
It is a rare case of soldiers being punished in the state where the army often faces protests and objection because of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which gives it sweeping powers to search, arrest, and shoot people.
The court found that the men were lured to Kupwara district with promises of jobs and money, but shot dead by the troops in a staged encounter near the border with Pakistan. The army described them as Pakistani militants trying to sneak in from the Machil sector along the Line of Control.
The killings triggered widespread protests in the Kashmir Valley — 113 people were killed. They also led to calls for scrapping the contentious AFSPA, which the army says is necessary for battling militancy in the state.
The erring soldiers have been identified as colonel Dinesh Pathania, captain Upendra, havildar Devendra Kumar, lance naik Lakhmi, lance naik Arun Kumar and rifleman Abbas Hussain.
