The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is set to chargesheet five Army officers, including a Brigadier, for the alleged abduction and murder of five unarmed, innocent Kashmiris in the infamous Pathribal “encounter” in Anantnag in March 2000.

The agency’s indictment is sweeping: from Army officers faking witness statements and “fabricating evidence” to passing off the premeditated killings as a “stage-managed encounter”; from the hasty burial of the bodies to evidence that the weapons the Army said it used were not used at all.

The chargesheet, to be filed in the next few days in a Jammu and Kashmir court, names Brigadier Ajay Saxena, Lt Col Brijendra Pratap Singh, Major Sourabh Sharma, Major Amit Saxena and Subedar I Khan.

The case hit international headlines, coming as it did four days after the Chittisinghpora massacre in which 35 Sikh villagers were lined up and killed, allegedly by militants. The fact that US President Bill Clinton was in India at that time amplified the significance of the event. The five persons killed in Pathribal on March 24, 2000, were made out to be foreign militants behind the Chittisinghpora massacre. When local residents took out a protest march complaining these were men gone missing from nearby villages and killed in cold blood, they were fired upon near Brakpora. Ten more persons were killed.

Confirming the CBI’s decision, Director Vijay Shankar told The Indian Express: “The Army has performed an exceptional role in Jammu and Kashmir. However, there are one or two encounters where their role has been severely criticized. The Anantnag encounter is one such case which can be called an aberration and it was necessary for the CBI to clear the good name of the Army and expose persons responsible for the fake encounter.’’

The decision to chargesheet the Army officers (who were then attached to the Rashtriya Rifles) was delayed because former Director U S Mishra could not take a final decision given the division in the agency: while investigators were all for prosecution, some on its legal panel were not.

Shankar is said to have finally ruled that there was no requirement for the agency to seek sanction in the case and that a direct chargesheet was in order.

The Farooq Abdullah Government had constituted more than one inquiry into the Pathribal killings and faced severe flak when it was discovered that DNA samples had been fudged. Later, in July 2002, fresh DNA reports were tabled in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.

It was at this stage that Abdullah agreed to a CBI inquiry and in the Assembly identified the five civilians killed in Pathribal: Zahoor Ahmed Dalal, Juma Khan, Mohammad Yussuf Malik, Juma Khan and Bashir Ahmed Bhat.

In the course of its three-year long investigation the CBI amassed evidence which hinges on the following key findings:

•  Officers of the Rashtriya Rifles obtained signatures of witnesses on blank papers and later typed in statements showing the killings to have occurred during a fierce encounter with “foreign militants.”

•  Officers showed a huge quantity of arms and ammunition as having been used against five unarmed civilians to falsely show it was an encounter.

•  While officers of the 7 RR claimed “militants” had died of gunshots, three of the five bodies were charred beyond recognition indicating “brutal burning.”

•  Officers said there was a major gun battle but none of them had any injuries.

•  Ballistic evidence proved that weapons the officers claimed to have used had hardly been used for the encounter and injuries did not match the alleged firearm injuries.