Jawan gets death for killing superior

The 20-year-old soldier had, during an altercation, opened fire from his INSAS rifle killing Padmarajan and injuring sepoy Balwant Singh on October 28, 2006.

Awarding the death sentence, the General Court Martial observed that this was the rarest of the rare case wherein the soldier had fired at his superior officer without any provocation and killed him in cold blood.

However, it had held that the sentence was subject to confirmation by the Government of India.

This is the second time this year that an Army court has awarded death sentence to a jawan. Earlier in February, it had announced death penalty for sepoy K C Behra on charges of killing his company commander Lt Colonel Saket Saxena in Kashmir.

The Army authorities have already taken a serious note of increased incidents of fratricidal cases in Jammu and

Kashmir and to tackle the situation they have decided to initiate measures to ease stress among jawans.

To begin with they have instructed senior officers to listen to jawans and be liberal in granting them leave.

The security forces and Central Reserve Police Force have also introduced yoga classes to help them combat stress. These measures are apart from the Army authorities’ decision to recruit nearly 400 psychiatrists to help soldiers counter stress.