Murder of justice
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: January 29, 2014 -

"I know the troopers involved in the murder of my son won't be punished. I don't expect justice from the perpetrators. I only want to see the faces of killers once so that I would ask them the reason for snatching away my beloved son."

This is a verbatim of what Raja Bano of Moominabad in South Kashmir town, had stated while reaction to the news of the death of her only son, Zahoor Ahmad Dalal, who was only 25 years old then.

Zahoor Ahmad Dalal was among the five persons killed by the Army in a fake encounter at the forests of Pathribal village in Anantang district of South Kashmir on March 25, 2000, dubbing them as 'foreign militants' responsible for the massacre of 35 Sikhs five days earlier at Chittisinghpura village in the disputed Himalayan region, hours before a visit to India by then U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Before burying them, their bodies were also charred by the Army beyond recognition.

However, following public outcry, who insisted that the victims were innocent civilians who had been picked up from the streets and killed in cold blood as scapegoats, Jammu and Kashmir Government ordered exhumation of the bodies and their DNA samples were sent to forensic laboratories in Hyderabad where it was found that the samples were fudged.

Subsequently, the case was handed over to the CBI which charge-sheeted five Army officers namely Brigadier Ajay Saxena, Lieutenant Colonel Brajendra Pratap Singh, Major Sourabh Sharma, Major Amit Saxena and Subedar Idrees Khan in 2006 for the killing.

In the charge-sheet submitted in a Srinagar court, CBI had made it clear that the deaths were "cold blooded murder" carried out as a result of 'tremendous psychological pressure' on the Army unit to show results after the massacre of 36 Sikhs in Chittisinghpura in the disputed Kashmir valley hours before the visit of then US President Bill Clinton to India.

Accordingly, CBI had demanded stern punishment for the accused Army officers. However, Army invoked the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, and then challenged the CBI probe in the Supreme Court.

After years of legal battle between CBI and Army, the Supreme Court in March 2012 gave the army eight weeks to decide whether the officers accused of the fake encounter should be tried by court-martial proceedings or by regular criminal courts.

Predictably, Army instituted a court of inquiry and gave clean chit to all the five accused Army personnel recently contending that the evidence recorded could not establish a prime facie case against any of the accused, and thus, closed the case.

Perhaps, this was what Raja Bano had envisioned when she said that she knew that the troopers involved in the murder of her son won't be punished and she did not expect justice from the perpetrators, because, like all others who have lived for so long under areas declared disturbed by the Government without any proper criteria, she can't expect justice as the sword of AFSPA could murder even the hope of justice in the world's largest democratic country called India.