A charge sheet has been filed in the court against three persons by the Jammu and Kashmir police. The three people against which the charge sheet has been filed also includes an army captain. The charge sheet is filed related to the alleged fake encounter in Shopian on July 18’ 2020 which left three civilians dead.
A 1400-page charge sheet has been filed in the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Shopian, on Saturday in the killings of the Rajouri residents, Imtiyaz Ahmed, Abrar Ahmed, and Mohammed Abrar.
The accused have been identified as Army Captain Bhoopendra Singh alias Major Basheer Khan of 62 Rashtriya Rifles, Tabish Nazir, a resident of Chowgam and Bilal Ahmed Lone, a resident of Arabal Nikas, Pulwama. The police said Bilal Ahmed Lone had turned approver in the Case.
A police statement stated that it had been revealed in the investigation that Captain Bhoopendra Singh, Tabish Nazir, and Bilal Ahmed Lone had hatched a plot to abduct the three men and stage a fake encounter.
The statement read as,
“They deliberately and purposefully chose not to follow SOPs (special operating procedures) and planted illegally acquired weapons and material on their dead bodies after stripping them of their identities and tagged them as hardcore terrorists in possession of war-like stores and deliberately providing false information to colleagues/seniors.”
The charge sheet was filed after the army said that it had completed its summary of evidence against its men. The same took place on Thursday.
“The summary of evidence is being examined by the authorities in consultation with legal advisers for proceeding further. The Indian Army is committed to the ethical conduct of operations,” army spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said.
The three Rajouri residents were killed in an encounter on July 18’ 2020 in Shopian. While the Army said that the three were ‘terrorists’, later on, it admitted that the powers vested under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1990, had been exceeded by its men, who also breached the do’s and the don’ts of the Chief of Army Staff which was approved by the Supreme Court.
Three families of Rajouri had identified the slain men from their pictures on social media and alleged that the army had killed them in a fake encounter in Shopian where they had gone to work.
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