Five armymen get life sentence over staged shootout

Srinagar/New Delhi, Nov 13: Five armymen have been awarded life sentence for a staged shootout in 2010 in which three youths were killed in Machil area of Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district, army sources said. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, however, in a tweet said that seven army personnel were awarded life terms for the incident. Army sources said the five men, including two officers, were sentenced by "summary general court martial" but the sentence was subject to confirmation. The five armymen were identified as Colonel Dinesh Pathania, Captain Upendra, Havildar Devender, Lance Naik Lakhmi and Lance Naik Arun Kumar. The sources said the army does not take such instances lightly and justice was being delivered speedily after start of the court martial proceedings. Shezad Ahmad, Muhammad Shafi and Riyaz Ahmad, all from Nadihal village in Baramulla district, were gunned down by the armymen near the Line of Control (LoC) in Machil May 3, 2010. The army had then claimed that the youths were Pakistan-trained guerrillas who were killed while trying to infiltrate into the Kashmir Valley. But when pictures of the slain youths were published in newspapers, their families and relatives identified them as three missing youths who had no connection with militancy.