An officer of the rank of major belonging to the Army’s 4 Rajput Battalion and four of his junior colleagues found involved in the April 30 staged gunfight near the Line of Control, in which three innocent Kashmiri youth were slain, are being brought here from their present deployment location in a couple of days to be handed over to the local police.
The unit was shifted out of the Valley recently in a “routine process,” and the Army authorities here on Sunday ordered a high-level inquiry into the gory incident.
A defence spokesperson said here that based on the preliminary report received from the Jammu and Kashmir police, a high-level inquiry has been ordered by the Army.
“The inquiry will investigate all allegations. We will judiciously expedite proceedings as promised... the only delay we foresee is the recalling of witnesses involved in the incident as the unit has de-inducted, after competing its mandated tenure. However, efforts to get them back have already been initiated.”
The police submitted a copy of its preliminary probe report, along with a formal request seeking custody of the officer in question, named as Major Opendra, two subedar-majors and a soldier, to Lt. Gen. N.C. Marwah, GoC of 15 Corps, here on Saturday evening. The police has already arrested five persons, including a soldier of 161 Battalion of the Territorial Army, Abbas Hussein, former special police officer Bashir Ahmed Lone, his brother Abdul Qayyum and two others, Fayaz Ahmed Ikhwani and Abdul Majeed Butt, who had been working for the Army for some time and have been identified as collaborators.