Srinagar: A military tribunal that granted bail and stayed life term of five army soldiers convicted of killing three civilians in a staged gunfight in 2010, said it believed the dead were “terrorists because they wore Pathan suits.”
“The fact that the accused persons were terrorists… cannot be ruled out because they were wearing Pathan suits which are worn by terrorists,” the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), said in its bail order, an Indian Daily reported.
Pathani suits, it needs to be mentioned, are commonly worn by men across Kashmir valley.
The tribunal also said they believed the three young men killed were not civilians because they had ventured too close to the de facto border between India and Pakistan.
“There was absolutely no justification for a civilian to be present at such a forward formation near LoC, that too during the night when infiltration from across the border was high,” the AFT bench said, referring to the heavily militarised de facto boundary or the Line of Control (LoC).
The tribunal is being presided over by Justice V K Shaili and Lt General SK Singh.
On April 29, 2010, the Army killed three youths in the Machil sector of Kupwara district on the ground that they were foreign militants. However, a police investigation found out that the dead, Reyaz Ahmad, Mohammad Shafi and Shahzad Ahmadas, were residents of Nadihal Rafiabad of Baramulla district. They were made to come to Machil by a former special police officer, Bashir Ahmad Lone, and his accomplices with the offer of jobs and later handed over to the Army personnel for Rs. 50,000 each. The bodies were exhumed on May 28, 2010. (CNS)
