Kashmir court reserves judgement on Pathribal case

Srinagar, Nov 15: A local court here today reserved till November 30 its judgement on the Pathribal case in which five senior Army personnel have been charged with killing five innocent civilians in a fake encounter in south Kashmir in 2000.

As per court directions, the Army submitted before the Additional Sessions Judge its written objections in support of its claim that the case should not be heard in a civil court.

The judge had earlier asked Defense counsel advocate Anil Bhan to file written objections stating the case against the Army could not be proceeded in a civil court.

Mr Bhan had submitted verbal objections stating that in lieu of the Armed Forces (Special) Powers Act in vogue in the state, a lawsuit against the Army cannot be taken up in a civil court.

Five senior Army personnel, including a Brigadier, have been accused of killing five innocent civilians in a fake encounter at Pathribal in Anantnag district of south Kashmir on March 25, 2000.

Brigadier Ajay Saxena, Lt Col (then Major) Bijendra Pratap Singh, Major Sourabh Sharma, Major Amit Saxena and Subedar Idrees Khan, then attached with 7 RR, had allegedly killed the five civilians -- Zahoor Ahmed Dalal of Mominabad, Mohammad Yousuf Malik of Kokernag, Bashir Ahmed Bhat of Kapran Dooru, Juma Khan (son of Faqeer Khan) and Juma Khan (son of Sher Ali Khan) of Brari Angan -- in a fake encounter and later dubbed them as foreign militants responsible for killing 36 Sikhs at Chattisinghpora village in Anantnag district on March 20, 2000.

The CBI had taken up the investigations and filed a charge-sheet against the Army in a local court here on May 11 this year. According to the chargesheet, the accused Army personnel carried out ''Operation Swift'' in the forest area of Pathribal and allegedly killed the five innocent civilians in a fake encounter. ''The Army personnel involved entered into a criminal conspiracy in which they decided to pick up five innocent civilians and stage-managed a fake encounter to claim that the slain persons had been the perpetrators of the Chattisinghpora massacre,'' it added.

''The accused tried to create an impression that the millitants responsible for Chhattisinghpora killings had been neutralised.'' the chargesheet said.

The CBI said the Army was under tremendous pressure for the killing of 36 Sikhs at Chattisinghpora at a time when the then US President Bill Clinton had visited India. The Army was blamed for the killings as it was a major intelligence failure.

Following a public outcry, the investigation of the case was handed over to the CBI on February 14, 2003 by the then Jammu and Kashmir government after the relatives of the slain people complained that they were innocent and had gone missing on March 24, 2000, a day before the Panchalthan-Pathribal incident.

The bodies were exhumed and the DNA tests later established that they were innocent civilians and not ''militants''.

The CBI said three of the five civilians killed suffered extensive burn injuries and the bodies were charred establishing that it was a fake encounter.

The bodies were burnt to pre-empt identification, it added.

The accused had told the CBI that the information about the ''militants'' was provided to them by the then Senior Superintendent of Police, Anantnag, On March 24 night and carried out ''Operation Swift'' in Panchalthan forests in the morning of March 25, 2000, resulting in the death of five civilians.

However, the charge has been strongly denied by the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

After killing the innocent civilians, the Army had handed over the bodies to the Achchabal police station with a mention that three were ''Pakistani militants'' and two unidentified.

The accused had also shown fake recovery of arms and ammunition from them in the encounter to prove that they were ''militants'' after obtaining signatures of two civilians on blank papers and subsequently filling in the details on a type-writer.

UNI