A fellow soldier — the “lone witness” gunner Desai Mohan — turned out to be the killer of the four soldiers killed at Bathinda military station on Wednesday. Following “sustained interrogation” till late on Sunday, Mohan confessed to the fratricide and also stealing the INSAS rifle used for killing his colleagues due to “personal animosity”
The motive behind the killing, as per preliminary investigations, is said to be personal and that of “revenge”. The police maintained that the statement of the accused indicated sexual harassment and and sodomisation by the four deceased jawans.
After his confession, Mohan was arrested, and is currently in police custody, even as the police are ascertaining further details. The police stated that further questioning will be done after taking him on remand. Accused Mohan from the Artillery Unit, where the incident occurred, is from Andhra Pradesh.
Notably, on April 12, four Indian Army personnel — 25-year-old Sagar Banne, 24-year-old Kamalesh R, 24-year-old Yogeshkumar J, and 25-year-old Santosh M Nagaral — were shot dead in the Aisa’s largest military station at Bathinda while they were asleep in the wee hours. An INSAS rifle, believed to be the same that was reported missing on April 9, along with 19 bullet casings, was recovered from the spot.
As per the statement of Mohan, who claimed himself to be the “only witness” to the incident, the investigators initially suspected that two men have been involved in killing the four Army jawans. However, Mohan — following “sustained interrogation” — confessed to his crime.
Confirming the development in the morning, Bathinda Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Gulneet Singh Khurana said that the witness in the case, Mohan, is the killer and has been arrested by the Bathinda police.
A senior police official, talking with The Pioneer, said that the guard, who was the “lone witness of the incident”, was “our prime suspect from the beginning as his statements were not convincing”.
The Bathinda SSP, who addressed the media along with Bathinda Military Station officer Col Anmesh Sharan, said that gunner Mohan had stolen INSAS rifle, magazine, and eight bullets of LMG and used it in crime.
Sharing the chain of events on the basis of investigations, SSP Khurana said, “After committing the crime, Mohan had thrown the rifle and seven bullets in a sewer pit inside the cantonment.”
Col Anmesh Sharan said that after the incident, a “physical search of the entire forest area was carried out, and also through the drone. Also, an intensified search operation was conducted on the statement of the eyewitness. But after searching and scanning of the CCTV footage, we came to the conclusion that the eyewitness seems to be misleading. Then we started probing him…The police was also called in and the entire matter unfolded”.
An official statement by the Indian Army’s South Western Command also made it clear that there was “no terror angle to the killings as speculated earlier in some media reports”.
The statement stated that on April 9, Mohan allegedly stole the weapon along with a filled magazine. “He then hid the weapon. On 12 April, while on sentry duty, he recovered the weapon from its hiding place, moved to the first floor, and killed all four personnel while they were asleep.”
Mohan later allegedly threw the weapon into the sewage pit.
