The army has agreed to court-martial five soldiers, including a brigadier, accused of killing five civilians in Pathribal village of Kashmir 12 years ago and passing them off as militants. On May 1, the Supreme Court had given the army eight weeks to decide whether the accused should be tried by a regular criminal court or face a court-martial. The ruling had disappointed rights groups fighting to have the soldiers tried in a criminal court. This week, the army applied to the court of Srinagar chief judicial magistrate Rajeev Gupta, agreeing to a trial in a “military court/court martial”. The court allowed the plea.
On March 25, 2000, the army had claimed to have killed “five foreign militants”, allegedly responsible for the murder of 36 Sikhs in Kashmir’s Chattisinghpora village. Some families later claimed the Pathribal victims could be their missing relatives picked up by the security forces shortly after the Chattisinghpora massacre. The security forces fired on protesters disputing the army version, leaving 10 civilians dead. In 2006, the CBI said it had enough evidence to show the killings were “extra-judicial executions” that amounted to “cold-blooded murder”. The agency indicted five people: Brigadier Ajay Saxena, Lt Colonel Brijinder Pratab Singh, Major Saurabh Sharma, Major Amit Saxena and Subedar Idrees Khan.