Army initiates court-martial against Captain in 2020 Amshipora fake encounter

The police chargesheet in the fake gunfight had also accused Captain Bhoopendra Singh alias Major Basheer Khan of abduction and the murder of the three Rajouri men. The police chargesheet had further mentioned that the weapon of the offence of the Captain has been recovered by police.

On July 18, 2020, three labourers from Rajouri in Jammu—Imtiyaz Ahmad,20, and Mohammad Abrar, 16, residents of the Dharsakri village, and Abrar Ahmad, 25, from the Tarkasi village of Kotranka in Rajouri—were killed in a staged encounter in the Amshipora village. The army and police had dubbed the three labourers as unidentified militants and buried them discreetly in a graveyard in North Kashmir.

The cover over the operation was blown on August 10, 2020, when the pictures of the bodies of the three labourers were leaked on social media, a day after their families had filed a missing report with the police saying their sons, who had gone to Kashmir for work, went missing since the night of July 17, 2020. As soon as the pictures went viral on social media, the families identified the men forcing the army to order a probe into the killings.

On September 18, 2020, the army’s court of inquiry confirmed that the three men killed in the Amshipora village staged gunfight were actually labourers from Rajouri. Their identity was further confirmed by the DNA test results. The Summary of Evidence conducted by the army had found Captain Singh culpable in the killings.

On October 3, 2020, the J-K government exhumed the bodies of the three labourers and handed them over to their families.