The Jammu and Kashmir high court on Wednesday gave four weeks’ time to the defence ministry to respond to a petition filed by a Kashmiri woman alleging that her son was killed in a fake encounter and later branded as a foreign militant involving Lt. Gen. Bikram Singh, the Eastern Army Commander and top contender to the Army chief post, in March 2001.
It has been alleged in the petition filed by Zaituna Bi that 1 Sector of the Rashtriya Rifles, headed by Singh, then a brigadier, faked a gunfight to kill a civilian and pass him off as a foreign militant at Janglat Mandi in southern Anantnag district. The Army had claimed that a colonel, a soldier, two civilians and the alleged foreign militant Mateen Chacha were killed in the “encounter” while Singh was injured. Lt. Gen. Singh’s involvement in the controversial incident resurfaced recently and dragged the attention of media across the country in the backdrop of his being one of the front-runners in the race for being the next Army chief.
However, a closure report filed by the Army after a joint investigation with the J&K police has exonerated Lt. Gen. Singh. It confirms the name of the dead person, whom the petitioner claims was her son, as foreign militant Ghulam Mohiuddin Ramzie alias Mateen Chacha from erstwhile North Western Frontier Province of Pakistan. The woman, a resident of Kalaroos, a remote village in frontier Kupwara district, supported by an NGO YES Kashmir, has in her petition sought a re-investigation and exhumation of the body for a DNA test. The petition gives the name of the alleged fake encounter victim as Abdullah Bhat, a labourer and a part-time beggar. Zaituna and her daughter Jana have told the court that the Army killed Bhat and then passed him off as Mateen Chacha and have based their claim on descriptions of the features of the slain person.
Justice Hasnain Masoodi gave four weeks time to the counsel of defence ministry to file objections to the petition. The state government and SSP Anantnag, who are the other respondents in the case, have already filed their objections to the petition, pleading it be dismissed as it was not maintainable.
The SSP Anantnag has, in his report, denied the claim of the petitioners that they had approached the police authorities of the district for many years seeking a reinvestigation of the case.