Explained: Story of the 2020 Amshipora fake encounter, in which Army has started court martial proceedings against Captain

On the morning of July 18 in 2020, the Army said that soldiers of 62 RR had killed three unidentified militants in a pre-dawn gunbattle at Amshipora village in Shopian. It was claimed that two pistols were recovered from the “possession” of the slain men.

However, suspicions arose quickly, especially as the Jammu and Kashmir Police dissociated themselves from the operation, saying it was based on an Army input, and that they had joined it “only later”.

The three slain men were discreetly buried in a graveyard in North Kashmir.

Revelation

On August 9, 2020, three families from Rajouri in Jammu region approached the police saying three of their men, Imtiyaz Ahmad (20) and Mohammad Abrar (16) of Dharsakri village, and Abrar Ahmad (25) of Tarkasi village of Kotranka Rajouri, were missing. The three men had gone to Kashmir looking for work, travelling to the Valley on foot through the Shopian mountains.

The day after, on August 10, 2020, the pictures of the bodies of the three slain men were leaked on social media. The Rajouri families immediately identified them as their men, forcing the Army to issue a brief statement saying they were “investigating the matter”.

Investigation

On August 13, a police team from Shopian went to Rajouri to collect DNA samples of the family to match with the DNA of the slain men. The Army, however, didn’t term the encounter as staged, and said that the police were investigating.

On September 18, the Army said that its preliminary inquiry had prima facie concluded that the three killed men were the three labourers from Rajouri. On September 25, DNA tests confirmed that the three men killed and buried as “unidentified militants” were the labourers from Rajouri.

On October 3, the bodies of the three labourers were exhumed and returned to the families for burial in their home villages, and on December 26, 2020, the J&K Police filed a chargesheet accusing Capt Bhoopendra Singh alias Major Basheer Khan and two civilians for “abduction and murder of the youth”.

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