In July last year, security forces in Kashmir claimed to have killed three “unidentified hardcore terrorists” in a gunfight in Amshipora vi...
In July last year, security forces in Kashmir claimed to have killed three “unidentified hardcore terrorists” in a gunfight in Amshipora village of Kashmir’s Shopian district.
The claim unravelled within a month when three families filed missing persons complaints with the police in Jammu’s Rajouri district. Each had a young member working in Shopian as an ordinary labourer. Two of them were men in their twenties, while the third was a teenager. They had last made phone calls to their families on July 17, a day before the purported gunfight had taken place.
An army inquiry and a police probe into the encounter established that the three suspected militants killed in Amshipora were the missing youth from Rajouri.
In October, Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha visited the three families and assured them that justice will be done.
In December, the Jammu and Kashmir police filed a chargesheet of more than 200 pages against a captain of the Indian Army and two civilians for the alleged abduction and subsequent murder of the three workers.
While the submission of the police chargesheet was seen as an important step in the delivery of justice to the victims’ families, nearly seven months later, the trial is yet to...
