An embarrassed Indian army is trying to play down the disappearance of two of its soldiers while on a joint exercise in the United States.
Two soldiers had gone missing while on a joint exercise with the US
NEW DELHI: An embarrassed Indian army is trying to play down the disappearance of two of its soldiers while on a joint exercise in the United States. The soldiers from 1/1 Gurkha Rifles were both Nepali citizens serving with the Indian Army. About 40,000 people from the Himalayan nation works with Indian army.
The army said it has ordered a court of inquiry to establish the circumstances under which the two riflemen Sanjay Mahato and Santosh Thapa disappeared after the 10-day exercise. A 119-member Indian army team conducted a joint exercise, code named Exercise Shatrujeet, with US soldiers from the 15th marine expeditionary unit in camp pendleton in California, from March 10 to 20. On March 21, when the Indian contingent was packing up they realised two of them were missing. An army spokesman said the two have been declared “Absent Without Leave”, and would be declared deserters if they don’t turn up in 30 days’ time.
The two do not have their passports, any other official documents or weapons on them, the army said. If they had run away with “war-like stores” then they would immediately be declared deserters. The army meanwhile tried to play down the incident, saying almost every army unit has soldiers who are missing without authorisation. But it is for the first time in recent memory that soldiers have ran away in a foreign land.
The US defence department lodged a complaint with the local police soon after the soldiers disappeared. “We are awaiting the outcome of those investigations and are also conducting our own enquiry,” the officer said.
In December, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had filed a case against an Indian Army brigadier for abetting a passport scam.
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