(As Defence Lawyer)
New Delhi, UPDATED: Jul 26, 2017 11:50 ISTThe court suspended their punishment of life imprisonment, and also granted them bail in the case, related to the death of three civilians in the Kashmir Valley in 2010.
Five Army personnel convicted by a general court martial in the highly politicised Machhil “fake encounter” case secured a major victory as a military court suspended their punishment of life imprisonment.
The armed forces tribunal also granted them bail in the case related to the death of three civilians in Kashmir Valley in 2010 where the accused were dismissed from service and given jail terms allegedly under pressure from the then National Conference government in the state.
Colonel Dinesh Pathania, Captain Upendra, Havildar Devender Kumar, Lance Naik Lakhmi, Lance Naik Arun Kumar from 4 Rajput Regiment and rifleman Abas Hussain of the Territorial Army were convicted in 2014 for alleged human rights abuse.
“The armed forces tribunal bench headed by Justice VK Shali suspended the punishment awarded to these personnel and granted them bail in the case,” Major Anand Kumar and Major Pandey, the two lawyers of five Army personnel in the case, told Mail Today.
“The suspension of punishment means that the troops would be out of jail while the court would continue to hear the case on the trial conducted by the force against them.”
The Army investigation and order in the case also came under criticism as the force had “failed to establish the chain of evidences to confirm the circumstantial evidence which was relied upon by the Army court martial to convict the personnel.”
PUBLIC OUTCRY
There was a public outcry after photographs of those killed in the alleged encounter were released, as relatives and neighbours of the slain persons claimed that the three men were framed and killed in a stage-managed gunfight and they were not connected with militancy in any way.
From the beginning of the case in 2010, the National Conference had been pressurising the central government to hold trial and punish the Army men in the case, observers say. All the five personnel have been languishing in different prisons across the country: Col Pathania is lodged in the Nahan jail in Himachal Pradesh while Captain Upendra is in a jail in Rajasthan’s Ajmer city.
Two of the soldiers are in Meerut jail while Lance Naik Lakhmi is in the Bharatpur prison. Pointing to loopholes in the Army’s investigations, Major Anand said that according to the police and Army theories, a person called Bashir was responsible for handing over the three deceased – Reyaz Ahmad, Mohammad Shafi and Shahzad Ahmad – to the 4 Rajput Rifles, but he was not even questioned by the court martial in its proceedings.
Asked for his reaction on the tribunal’s ruling, the lawyer of the remaining accused in the case, said the six Army personnel convicted were fighting for the nation but they were punished under pressure from the political parties there.
Major Anand contended that the “trial was vitiated and the Army court did not do justice to its own personnel and it is gradually emerging that it was not a case of fake encounter but that of a fake trial.” The Army had completed the trial in the case in December 2013 but it took almost two more years to confirm the sentence, in September 2015.
Read More At: https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/machhil-fake-encounter-case-armed-forces-tribunal-kashmir-1026287-2017-07-26