Gunner Desai Mohan has been arrested for reportedly killing four soldiers at the Bathinda Military Station, in the northern border province of Punjab, an official said on Monday, April 17. The crime was allegedly committed with a stolen INSAS assault rifle. Following “sustained interrogation” till late on Sunday night, Mohan “confessed to his involvement” in snatching the assault rifle and killing his colleagues. According to the results of a preliminary probe, this action was possibly driven by “personal enmity” or “vendetta”.
The police said the accused’s statements indicated physical harassment by the four jawans. The senior superintendent of police at Bathinda, Gulneet Singh Khurana, desisted from commenting on the exact nature of harassment that Mohan had allegedly undergone. Several unconfirmed reports claimed that he had allegedly been subjected to sodomy. But the exact details were not divulged in the police press briefing regarding the case.
An inquiry into the fratricides was not responded to by the Indian Army.
Linked to Stress & Depression
This focuses attention to the problem of fratricide within the country’s armed and paramilitary services. In military diction, fratricide means an incident involving a soldier or security personnel killing their team members. Several studies carried out in the past two decades have linked fratricide and suicide in the Services in India to depression, anxiety and stress.
The three units of the Indian Services—Army, Navy and Air Force—have seen nearly 800 people killing themselves since 2017, according to statistics declared by the defence ministry in July 2022. There are over 1.4 million active members in the Indian military.
Official data disclosed in February 2020 quoted the junior defence minister as saying that, between 2016 and 2020, seven Armymen and two Air Force personnel were killed, but none in the Navy. To prevent such cases, the minister stated that the ministry had developed a mental health project in 2009 that focused on stress management and people at high risk of combat stress were identified and counselled.
Maj-Gen (retd) AP Singh said the Bathinda incident was not a chance happening of a blue-on-blue incident. “Some possible reasons are vendetta, personal frustrations, bad blood between armymen and fear of being caught in a wrong act.”
A 2020 study that was carried out by a serving army officer and was published by the United Service Institution of India said pressures created in and out of the call of duty caused a remarkable rise in stress levels among soldiers in the Indian Army in the past two decades. Over 50% of the Army personnel seem to be under immense stress at the moment, it stated, adding that prolonged exposure to counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency activity was a significant cause of concern.
-The writer is a Defence and Aerospace Analyst. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda.
