The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday stayed the Nagaland police’s proceedings against 30 army personnel who opened fire at tribals killing 14 people on December 2021.
The court was hearing two pleas – one filed by Anjali Gupta, wife of the prime accused, a Major who headed the team, and the other that was filed by the National Human Rights Commission against the Army personnel.
A bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and V Ramasubramanian noted that the death of a paratrooper has not yet been investigated. “An Army paratrooper named Gautam Lal was killed by angry villagers on the same night and not on the day of the encounter,” the bench noted.
Gupta has asked to quash the FIR naming her husband as the prime accused as well as the report filed by the Special Investigating Team (SIT) on the encounter.
Gupta, in her plea, stated that by naming the personal details of the accused, the Nagaland police and the SIT have compromised the safety of the Army personnel.
She claimed that the Army personnel were, “performing their bonafide duties as directed by the Union of India, but the SIT so constituted to conduct a free and impartial investigation into the said incident has acted in a completely arbitrary, unilateral and illegal manner, by picking and choosing the evidence available before it to appease the public outcry and to assuage the concerns of the chose few.”
The National Human Rights Commission had filed a complaint against the Army Major. The Nagaland police also filed a charge sheet against 30 Army personnel present during the encounter.
Based on the charge sheet and SIT investigation, the Nagaland Government sought the Indian Government’s permission to prosecute the accused.
Background of Nagaland encounter
On December 4, 2021, based on a tipoff, the Alpha team of 21 Para Special Forces containing 29 members, killed 14 villages in the Tiru-Oting area of Nagaland in two separate incidents.
The first incident took place at 4:26 pm where six people were killed and the second incident took place on the same day at around 9:55 pm where seven people were killed.
According to a report by The Wire, the Army Major, heading the operation, knew for about 50 minutes that they had taken the wrong route.
The officer discarded the information and ordered his men to carry out the operation in Nagaland’s Mon district killing six people.
As they were waiting for the Nagaland police to establish the identity of the dead people, angry villagers attacked them which led the army personnel to open fire at them killing seven more.
Two army soldiers were also seriously injured in the attack.
The SIT formed to investigate the encounter claimed in its report that “all victims were shot with the clear intention to kill”.
According to the forensic report, all victims were shot multiple times from close range and suffered injuries on their upper bodies.
The SIT also stated that the victims were all unarmed and no weapons were recovered from them by the police. It has accused the Army Major of “deliberate ommissions” of crucial information leading to the death of 14 villagers.
But the Indian Army maintains that the team was sent on a ‘counter-insurgency operation’ following a tipoff that there is a likely movement of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (K-YA) group. However, they mistook the villagers for militants.
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