The incident occurred at 12.15 am when Major Shikhar Thapa of 71 Armoured Regiment, posted with the 8 Rashtirya Riffles (RR), caught a jawan using a cell phone during sensitive duty and scolded him for flouting the rules.
Tragedy hit the Indian Army after a jawan shot dead his senior officer after the latter reprimanded him for using a cell phone during duty hours. The incident took place on Monday along the Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmir.
The incident occurred at 12.15 am when Major Shikhar Thapa of 71 Armoured Regiment, posted with the 8 Rashtirya Riffles (RR), caught a jawan using a cell phone during sensitive duty and scolded him for flouting the rules.
Major Thapa tried to confiscate the phone, the screen of which broke during the tussle, triggering an argument between the two. The jawan then turned his AK 47 at the major and pumped two bursts of five bullets into him, killing him on the spot.
The incident occurred at a time when troops were put on maximum alert on the LoC after Pakistan violated ceasefire and fired on Indian forward positions in different sectors. Sources said using cell phone in such a situation is gross dereliction of duty.
"In an unfortunate incident at one of the forward posts in Uri Sector along LoC, an Army officer was killed in the firing by one of the Army jawans after an altercation," said Colonel Rajesh Kalia, defence spokesman at Srinagar. "The Officer succumbed to his injuries on the spot. Further investigations by the Army and the Police are underway." Senior Superintendent of Police, Baramulla, Imtiyaz Hussain said the case has been registered and post-mortem of the slain officer is underway.
Under army rules, no soldier is allowed to use mobile phones during duty hours. There are strict guidelines about their use even off duty. No soldier is allowed to use phones to take pictures of the unit location or distribute it on the social media. If a solider is seen using a cell phone during duty or taking pictures either with weapon or in uniform, the phone is confiscated and the action against the soldier is initiated.
During sensitive missions, all the phones are collected and kept in the quarter guard and returned after the mission is accomplished.
The spectre of fratricide in J&K
This is not the first time fratricide has come to haunt the Army in Jammu and Kashmir. On Feburary 27, 2014, a soldier shot dead five of his colleagues and injured another before turning the gun on himself at Safapora. On April 25, 2014, a jawan shot dead two colleagues before killing himself at Golpur.
Analysis conducted by the Army's Northern Command in 2008 revealed that the major causes of the deaths of soldiers in suicides and fratricides are martial discord, failed love affairs, domestic issues, medical problems and orgainsational reasons.
The study found that continuous vigil, relentless counter infiltration and counter terror operations coupled with unresolved domestic problems become the causative factors for stress. There were 44 cases of suicides and 10 cases of fratricide in 2005. The number fell considerably in three years: There were only 34 cases of suicide and a single case of fratricide in 2008.
A slew of measures including training of counsellors were put in place to prevent the incidents of suicides and fratricides in future. Other measures include education to understand stress, practicing yoga and other stress relieving techniques.
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