NEW DELHI: An Indian army gunner has been arrested for the killing of four soldiers at a military base near the Pakistan border, police said on Monday, ruling out a terror motive.

The attack took place last week at the Bathinda military station in East Punjab, a northern state where tensions have been high over the resurgence of a separatist movement.

Police said the accused gunner, Desai Mohan, shot the four soldiers dead in the early hours of the morning while they slept, using a stolen rifle and ammunition. Local media reports quoted an unnamed police official saying the accused was being sexually abused by the four soldiers.

“The motive was personal,” senior police superintendent Gulneet Singh Khurana told reporters in Bathinda. “He had enmity with them.” East Punjab has been on edge since authorities launched a manhunt for firebrand Sikh separatist preacher Amritpal Singh last month.

Media reports say the accused was sexually abused by the soldiers

Singh rallied a huge following in recent months by demanding the creation of Khalistan, a separate Sikh homeland, the struggle for which sparked deadly violence in Punjab during the 1980s and ‘90s.

He remains at large despite a dragnet involving thousands of police officers and a statewide internet shutdown that lasted several days.

Fratricide

The arrest of an Indian soldier over the killing of four others at a military base has brought into focus the issue of fratricide in the country’s military and paramilitary forces. Fratricide, in military parlance, refers to a soldier or security personnel killing their own colleagues. Multiple studies over the last two decades have attributed fratricides and suicides in Indian armed forces to stress and depression.

The Indian army did not respond to a request for comment on the issue of fratricides.

India’s army, navy and airforce have together lost more than 800 personnel to suicide since 2017, the defence ministry said in July 2022. The Indian military has about 1.4 million active personnel.

According to official data made public in February 2020, the junior defence minister told parliament that there were seven killed in the army between 2016 and 2020, two in the air force and none in the navy during the same period.

The minister said that to prevent such cases the ministry had launched a mental health programme in 2009, which focuses on stress management, and those at high risk of combat stress are identified and counselled.

Retired Major General A. P. Singh said that the Bathinda incident was not a case of accidental blue-on-blue killing.

“Internal frustration, revenge, fear of getting caught for a misdeed and bad relations between soldiers, are some of the main reasons,” Singh said.

A 2020 study by a serving army officer and published by the United Service Institution of India, reported a significant increase in stress levels among army personnel in the last two decades due to operational and non-operational stressors.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2023