sujan

The Telegraph - Calcutta : Frontpage

Old crime, new punishment
SUJAN DUTTA

New Delhi, June 23: For the first time in an incident of a soldier killing his superiors, the army has identified the motive and handed the accused the lighter life sentence.

In similar cases earlier, the verdict had been death.

The reason for the lighter sentence: the soldier killed seniors sexually harassing him.

The soldier given the life sentence after 25 sittings of a court martial is a signalman from Assam with the 27 Mountain Division Signals Regiment and was posted near Rajouri in Jammu and Kashmir, a very senior Northern Command officer has confirmed to The Telegraph.

His name is being withheld because of the circumstances of the case and the possibility that he was fighting to protect his dignity.

The army top brass is still debating if the sentence should be different in this case.

This is the third time in three months that the army has tried soldiers for killing seniors. But it is the first time a Summary General Court Martial has established the motive — “deviant sexual assault”.

The Judge Advocate advising the three-member court martial bench headed by a colonel in Udhampur is a woman, Lieutenant Jyoti Sharma.

The facts of the case: around 3am on October 21 last year, the signalman took his standard issue service weapon, an Insas 5.56 rifle, and shot Havildar Bhal Singh Vitthal Chandra, the seniormost non-commissioned officer in his unit, Havildar Gani Galaiya and a (uniformed) clerk, Nikhil Kumar. The last was killed around 3.15am.

The signalman then turned the gun on himself in an attempt at suicide. He shot himself but colleagues overpowered him. In the melee, two others were injured.

By 4am, the unit medical team had established that the three superiors were dead. There were still 20 rounds in the magazine of the signalman’s rifle. He was issued 40 rounds.

In accounts to the court martial from the signalman and witnesses, it was conveyed that the first killed — Havildar Chandra — was the leader of a pack that made sexual advances at the signalman.

The signalman was a fresh recruit — maybe around 20 years old — who was just a month old in the unit. The advances were made since the day he joined the unit.

The havildar and the two others often referred to the youth as “chikna” — slang for “effeminate” or “unmasculine”.

At first they tried to seduce him. When he spurned their advances, they tried to force him on more than one occasion. Witnesses have told the court martial the advances were made in public also. Some of the other details of the case are too lurid to be described.

These accounts had a bearing on the sentence recommended by the court martial. There have been other cases of forced homosexual and deviant acts in the army. But there is almost no other case that has been documented and tried to this extent.

Since the death penalties handed out by courts martials in separate cases on February 26 and May 18 this year, there was the apprehension that an unwritten policy had been laid down by army headquarters. Fragging — the act of killing superiors — was punishable by death. The instant case shows that policy may not be uniform.

A Summary General Court Martial has the same powers of a General Court Martial but is held in field conditions and must comprise at least three officers. A General Court Martial is held in peace locations and comprises at least five officers.

Ray

Sujjan,

Go read Bharat Rakshak - Stress and the Indian Jawan Bharat Rakshak Forum :: View topic - Stress and the Indian Jawan

Good that you posted it here (WAB).

It would be nice to know the International reactions and how do they solve the problem.

Since you are the Defence Correspondent of the TELEGRAPH, what's the real story?

Interesting stuff also on the ARRSE (the unofficial British Army website). Would make a great story for you.

British Army Rumour Service > > Forums > > The Serious Bit > > Current Affairs, News and Analysis > > Sikh regiment dumped over 'racism' fears

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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

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Demosthenes

O_o

Now THAT'S weird...even for me.
I think I would have to agree with the whole life sentence thing for the poor guy. Death just doesn't seem right since his superiors were at fault.

RustyBattleship

What? There's no such plea as Self Defense in India? Are you just supposed to lay there and let deviates and thugs do what they want to you?

There is something missing here. I think it's called the right to protect yourself. But then, I'm an American and have a loaded gun by my bed and a Pirate's cutlass up on the wall over the fireplace.

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Rifleman

He kills to avoid becoming someone's purty thang butt-boy.....and now he spends his life in prison as.....?

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"Aim small, miss small." - Benjamin Martin in The Patriot

zraver

He killed his superiors. That is never excusable the chain of command must be preserved, he should have sought releif from his/thier superiors. The sexual harrassement was just a mitigating factor in his guilt, not a justifcation for his action.