Bathinda military station firing case: Jawan who killed 4 personnel gets life imprisonment
Bathinda military station firing case: A General Court Martial (GCM) sentenced an army jawan to life imprisonment and dismissal from service on Saturday after he killed four jawans at the high-security Bathinda military station on April 12, 2023.
The convict, Desai Mohan, and the victims, Sagar Banne, Kamlesh R, Santosh Nagaral, and Yogeshkumar J, were all members of the 80 Medium Regiment of Artillery and worked together at the mess.
Mohan was charged with four counts of murder under the Army Act's Section 69 (which states that any person subject to this Act who commits any civil offence in or outside India shall be deemed guilty of an offence against this Act) and Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code, as well as two counts of theft under Army Act Section 52(a) for theft of weapon and ammunition, according to officials.
The GCM's findings and sentencing are subject to review by higher army officials, according to the sources. Desai shot and killed his four colleagues as they slept in their dormitories near the officers' mess. Bathinda district police discovered 19 empty shells on the scene.
According to the first information report (FIR) submitted at the cantonment police station on April 12, Mohan said that he saw two masked males in white kurta-pyjamas near the crime scene.
Major Ashutosh Shukla of the 80 Medium Regiment filed the report, citing Mohan's information that one of the assailants was carrying an INSAS rifle and the other an axe. According to the FIR, an INSAS rifle and a magazine containing 28 cartridges went missing from an army unit on April 9. These were found by Bathinda police on the day of the murder.
The Army took over the case from the civil court under Army Act Section 125 for the trial of the accused by a court martial.
During the civil police investigation, the jawan from Andhra Pradesh initially accused the dead of sexual abuse. He further claimed that the four used his phone to talk with his fiancée, take compromising photographs of his fiancée and mock him.
During the trial, army officials stated that the accused claimed implication at the behest of police and military authorities and that they denied making any confessional statements to police or Army officials. However, the GCM dismissed his claim as unsubstantiated and an afterthought and convicted him of all six offences based on his voluntary confessional admission given at the Summary of Evidence and abundant circumstantial evidence on record.
- With inputs from agencies
