New Delhi: Military intelligence and Punjab Police combed through a list of around a dozen suspects before zeroing in on gunner Desai Mohan, who was arrested in connection with the Bathinda Military Station killings Sunday, it is learnt.
Sources in the defence and security establishment said it was clear to higher ups from the very beginning that the 12 April killings of four soldiers at the station were a case of fratricide, something ThePrint has been reporting from Day 1. But what threw local Army officers off the track initially was a statement given by Mohan, who claimed to have been the first person to arrive at the scene of the crime.
According to the First Information Report (FIR) registered on the complaint filed by Major Ashutosh Shukla from the 80 Medium Regiment, gunner Mohan claimed to have spotted two masked men in kurta-pyjama on the premises after the killings. It was Mohan who had alerted Major Shukla after he purportedly heard the gunshots. ThePrint has a copy of the FIR.
Mohan, who claimed to be the only witness to the killings, told his senior officer that one of the unknown assailants was carrying an INSAS (Indian Small Arms System) rifle, while the other had an axe.
A day after Mohan’s arrest, the Army’s South Western Command in a statement issued Monday said that the accused had “confessed to his involvement in stealing an INSAS rifle and killing four of his colleagues to the police”. The jawan claimed to have been “physically abused” by the four soldiers for some time.
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‘Missing INSAS rifle, no axe wounds in autopsy reports’
Police sources said that the moment personnel reached the scene of the crime, it was clear that it was a case of targeted killing, and not a terror attack. The location of the crime scene within the military station also indicated that this was an inside job, they added.
However, because the Army had filed a complaint giving a different version, the police registered the case but conducted their own investigation.
What piqued the interest of the police, sources further said, was also the fact that an INSAS rifle with a loaded magazine had gone missing from the unit two days ago.
“The INSAS rifle was also recovered from near the crime scene. No outsider or terrorist will first enter the camp, steal a rifle, hide it and then come back two days later and specifically go into this room behind the officer’s mess, shoot and then run away, leaving behind the weapon,” a source explained.
Sources further said that the police, who anyway doubted Mohan’s version of events, became more suspicious when post-mortem reports of the four slain soldiers showed that none of them had any axe wounds.
The police, it is learnt, wanted to interrogate Mohan, but the Army was still following its Court of Inquiry. While the Army did present a certain number of suspects, Mohan was still to be questioned by them as part of their own probe.
Sources said that the Army also started seeing Mohan as their prime suspect. The police then insisted on interviewing Mohan since he’d claimed to be the lone witness, they added. He was presented to the police Sunday and arrested within a few hours of allegedly admitting to killing the soldiers.
The ‘confession’
Sources said that according to his ‘confession’, Mohan stole the loaded INSAS rifle in the early hours of 9 April, and hid the weapon.
At around 4.30 am on 12 April, while he was on sentry duty, he allegedly recovered the weapon, moved to the first floor, and killed all four soldiers while they were asleep.
Mohan then threw the rifle into a sewage pit. The weapon and additional ammunition have been recovered from this pit, sources said.
The statement made by Mohan — when the initial FIR was lodged on 12 April — mentioning two individuals in civil dress with an INSAS rifle and axe, was an attempt to divert the attention of investigating agencies, the Army has said.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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