Clean chit to army men in Pathribal case a shame: Sikh bodies

Srinagar, January 26, 2014 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, the Sikh organizations have termed the exoneration of Indian Army officers involved in the Pathribal fake encounter as shameful saying that the Pathribal case is connected to Chattisinghpora massacre and should be probed so that truth comes to fore.

On March 20, 2000, on the eve of then US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India, gunmen reportedly dressed in army fatigues entered Chattisinghpora, a predominantly Sikh village in Islamabad district. They ordered all the Sikh men and boys to assemble at the village Gurdwara and shot at and killed 36 of them. On March 25, Army shot dead five men in Pathribal village in the same district and claimed they were foreign militants responsible for killing the Sikhs.

It later turned out that all those killed in Pathribal were local residents reportedly picked up by Army, police and government gunmen from various areas. Seven more people protesting against the Pathribal killings were killed in firing by police and paramilitary forces at Brakpora. All Parties Sikh Coordination Committee Kashmir (APSCCK), President, Jagmohan Singh Raina, terming the exoneration of Indian Army officials highly condemnable, demanded a time-bound inquiry into Chattisinghpora massacre.

He said that the involved Army officers should have been tried in a civil court after being found guilty by CBI and the Indian Supreme Court. “We have always been maintaining that Chattisinghpora, Pathribal and Brakpora are a series of interlinked occurrences and hence can’t be taken up in isolation. So we have been demanding a time-bound inquiry into Chattisinghpora massacre too,” he said.

Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee Chatisinghpora, while expressing sympathies with the Pathribal victim families, also demanded an inquiry into the Chatisinghpora massacre. “The fact that Chatisinghpora was controlled by the same Army unit which claimed to have killed five people in Pathribal makes it more necessary that an inquiry should have been ordered into Chatisinghpora killings too,” said members of the committee. A member of the committee, Yashpal Singh said, “We want truth to come out.”

The Sikh bodies said that though justice continued to elude the Pathribal victims and those killed in Brakpora, but at least truth had come to fore that Indian troops and police personnel were responsible for the two incidents. “In Chattisinghpora case, truth has been concealed for unknown reasons and no inquiry was conducted at all into the incident,” they lamented.

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