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Srinagar, Dec 8: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court today issued notices to the CBI and the state government to file their objections within three weeks to an appeal filed by the Army challenging a lower court's order to dismiss its revision petition in the Pathribal fake encounter case.

Justice Nisar Ahmed Kakroo also asked the five senior Army personnel, including a Brigadier, accused of killing five innocent civilians in a fake encounter at Pathribal in Anantnag district of south Kashmir on March 25, 2000 to file their separate appeals in the court on December 11.

On November 30, Additional District and Sessions Judge Gousia un Nisa Jeelani had dismissed the revision petition filed by the Army.

The judge had also directed the five Army personnel -- Brigadier Ajay Saxena, Lt Col (then Major) Bijendra Pratap Singh, Major Sourabh Sharma, Major Amit Saxena and Subedar Idrees Khan of the Rashtriya Rifles (RR) -- to appear before the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Srinagar M Y Akhoon on the next date of hearing on December 19.

The judge also directed the CJM, Srinagar to give one more opportunity to the Army to decide whether it wanted to hold court martial proceedings against the accused personnel or let the civil court try them.

The Army, through an appeal in the High Court, had sought a stay on the November 30 order of the Additional District and Sessions Judge and also directions to the CBI to withdraw its charge-sheet against the five personnel.

After hearing the arguments from both the sides, Justice Kakroo fixed the next date of hearing in the case on December 29.

In the last hearing on November 13, the Army had said it would not be able to initiate court martial proceedings against the five officials without prior sanction for prosecution from the Centre.

The CBI had filed a chargesheet in the CJM's court here on May 11 against the five Army officials, charging them with murder, wrongful confinement, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence. The Army officials, 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.

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 militants 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