Srinagar: The Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) has held that the plea for suspension of sentence by an Army captain, who was handed life imprisonment by an Army court in January this year for killing three men in southern Kashmir’s Shopian district in a staged encounter in 2020, shall not come in the way of the confirmation proceedings of the sentence. The sentence will be valid only after higher authorities in the Army confirm it.In its order, passed on May 29, the Tribunal said that even though it has reserved the order on the prayer made for suspension of sentence, it shall not come in the way of the competent authority proceeding with the process of confirmation of the sentence in accordance with the requirement of section 153 of the Army Act, 1950.“The Authority may proceed and pass appropriate orders with regard to confirmation or otherwise of the sentence,” reads the order passed by the Tribunal.Under the Army Act, the findings and sentences by an Army court are not valid unless confirmed by the competent authority. “No finding or sentence of a general, district or summary general, court-martial shall be valid except so far as it may be confirmed as provided by this Act,” reads section 153 of the Act.In January this year, the general court martial found the Army captain guilty on six charges, including murder, and recommended life imprisonment. The Army captain, Bhoopendra Singh alias Major Basheer Khan, and two others murdered three youngsters – including a minor – in July 2020, the court martial found. The murder was then staged as an “encounter”.Singh has filed an appeal against the court martial verdict in the AFT and claimed that he was made a “scapegoat” and he had “obediently complied with the orders of his commanding officer”.On May 15 this year, the Tribunal said that it cannot throw out the application filed by the captain for suspension of sentence “only on the ground that the confirmation petition is pending before the competent authority”.It had also directed the Army to produce the entire court martial proceedings along with evidence for consideration of the application for suspension of sentence. In 2017, the AFT suspended the life sentence of five Army personnel, including a colonel and a captain, who were handed life imprisonment for killing three civilians from the Nadihal area of Baramulla district in the Machil area of Kupwara in 2010. The tribunal is empowered to decide on appeals arising out of orders, findings or sentences of court martial under the Army Act, 1950, the Navy Act, 1957 and the Air Forces Act, 1950.The alleged encounterOn July 18, 2020, the Jammu & Kashmir police, in a statement, claimed that three unidentified militants were killed in a gunfight in the Amshipora area of Shopian on a specific input generated by the 62nd Battalion of Rashtriya Rifles.“During search, terrorists fired upon army personnel and [an] encounter started. Later on, police and CRPF also joined. During [the] encounter three unidentified terrorists were killed. Dead bodies of all the killed three terrorists were retrieved from the site of [the] encounter. The identification and affiliation of the killed terrorists [are] being ascertained,” the police said.A day later, Brigadier Ajay Katoch, commander of 12 Sector Rashtriya Rifles claimed that the Army had received “human intelligence inputs” about the presence of four to five unidentified militants in Amshipora.He even claimed that the Army personnel came under fire twice from the militants before they were neutralised. However, on August 10, 2020, three families from Rajouri district of Jammu province claimed that those killed by the Army were their kin who had come to Shopian to work as labourers in orchards. The youngsters had no links to the militancy.The families identified those who were killed as Ibrar Ahmad (25), Imtiyaz Ahmad (22) and Muhammad Abrar (16), based on pictures of the dead bodies which went viral on social media. After these claims, the Army and the J&K police ordered separate inquiries into the matter.Photographs of the three young labourers from Rajouri who were killed in a fake encounter in Amshipora on July 18, 2020.On October 3, 2020, the bodies of the deceased were exhumed from a graveyard in Baramulla. The investigations by the Army and the police, along with DNA tests, confirmed that the three who were killed in the alleged gunfight were the three youngsters from Rajouri.The police investigation in the case revealed that Army Captain Bhoopendra Singh alias Major Basheer Khan first abducted the three young men in a private car from their rented accommodation at Chowgam Shopian with the help of two accomplices. The captain, as per police probe, killed the three men and planted “illegal weapons and material on their dead bodies and tried to tag them as hardcore terrorists”. The police also said that the accused captain furnished false information and misled the senior officers to obtain the prize money of Rs 20 lakh. However, the Army said that there was no system of cash awards for its officers for any acts in combat situations.
