Ex-Indian Army officer wanted in 1996 murder kills himself and family in California

ejazr

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Ex-Indian Army officer wanted in 1996 murder kills himself and family in California, authorities say | Fox News

A former Indian Army officer wanted in a 1996 killing in his native country killed his wife and two of their children in their California home Saturday before apparently taking his own life, authorities said.

Avtar Singh called Selma police at around 6:15 a.m. and told them that he had just killed four people, Fresno County Sheriff's Deputy Chris Curtice said.

Selma police asked for assistance from the Fresno County Sheriff's Office because Singh was known to have a military background and was wanted by authorities in India for allegedly killing a human rights lawyer in 1996 in the disputed Kashmir region, Curtice said.

When a sheriff's SWAT team entered the home they found the bodies of Singh, a woman believed to be his wife and two children, ages 3 and 15, Curtice said. All four appeared to have died from gunshot wounds.

A 17-year-old boy also found in the home was suffering from severe head trauma and was "barely alive," Curtice said. The teen was taken to a hospital where he underwent surgery. His condition wasn't known.

Singh fled to the United States after he was accused of killing lawyer Jaleel Andrabi in Indian-controlled Kashmir's main city, Srinagar.

Andrabi disappeared in March 1996 at the height of an anti-India uprising, and his body was recovered 19 days later in a local river. He had been shot in the head and his eyes gouged out.

Singh, 47, was arrested by Selma police in February 2011 when his wife reported that he had choked her, Selma Police Chief Myron Dyck said shortly after that arrest. After Singh was taken into custody, police discovered that he was being sought in India.

Several days later, India requested that the United States arrest and extradite Singh. It wasn't clear on Saturday why Singh had remained free since the request.

Dyck didn't immediately return a call seeking comment Saturday about the 2011 arrest, and Selma police referred questions about Saturday's incident to Fresno County sheriff's officials.

Selma police last had contact with Singh about two months ago when he called to complain that reporters wouldn't leave him alone because of the murder warrant, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims told the Fresno Bee (Sheriff: Selma man kills wife, sons before killing self - Updates - fresnobee.com ).

Singh owned and operated Jay Truck Lines, a trucking company in Selma. Alli Adan, a driver for the company, said he spent time with Singh this past week, including Friday night, and Singh acted normally.

"He was a nice guy," Adan told the newspaper. "I couldn't believe it because I didn't think he could do something like this."
 

ejazr

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Re: Ex-Indian Army officer wanted in 1996 murder kills himself and family in Californ

For those who don't know the case, this is about Jaleel Andrabi who case was investigated and the army officer indicted. There was an extradition request pending with the US which they refused to honour. Similar to like the case with David Headley or Rana in the Mumbai case.

Something to note is the unfavorable response by the US in extradition requests from India and this is not the only case.
 

Ray

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Re: Ex-Indian Army officer wanted in 1996 murder kills himself and family in Californ

Avtar Singh is a very common Sikh name.

I wonder which Avatar this is.
 

W.G.Ewald

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Re: Ex-Indian Army officer wanted in 1996 murder kills himself and family in Californ

For those who don't know the case, this is about Jaleel Andrabi who case was investigated and the army officer indicted. There was an extradition request pending with the US which they refused to honour. Similar to like the case with David Headley or Rana in the Mumbai case.

Something to note is the unfavorable response by the US in extradition requests from India and this is not the only case.
Extradition treaty between India and the US
 

Zoravar

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Re: Ex-Indian Army officer wanted in 1996 murder kills himself and family in Californ

An article was published on this issue months back(I even posted it on DFI).They let him escape to USA because he threatened to blow the lid off these killings as he claimed that he did not act alone.The judge hearing the matter was transferred ,presumably to protect Maj. Avtar Singh.
Ps.Found the post and here's a link to the article which was published a few months back.

The Man Who Knows Too Much
He is accused of having abducted and killed lawyer Jaleel Andrabi in Srinagar in 1996. He has also been named for the murder of at least a dozen other men. He fled the country, and was back in the news after his wife reported him for domestic violence in California in February this year. A court has ordered the Ministry of External Affairs to ensure his extradition, but no action is being taken. Speaking to Open, the Major says if his extradition is actually initiated, he will never be allowed to return alive, he knows too much and he will not keep quiet
31
BY Hartosh Singh Bal EMAIL AUTHOR(S)
Tagged Under | murder | Srinagar | extradition
Trial
THE ACCUSED (inset) Ex Army Major Avtar Singh
THE ACCUSED (inset) Ex Army Major Avtar Singh

There is a photograph of Jaleel Andrabi (seen in the second photo above), surrounded by friends and family on his 36th birthday. It was taken on 29 January 1996. The camera has caught him leaning back in his armchair, laughing in a rare moment of ease. Andrabi was a prominent human rights lawyer in the Valley, allied with the JKLF. He had just come back from Geneva, where he had spoken out against the Indian government at a time when the Army and security forces were, in effect, Kashmir. Friends had told him he was on a hit list, but he had dismissed their concerns.

The same day, a vehicle had driven up to his house. Two bearded men in phirans walked up to the door and said their father had been set afire by the Army at Pulwama, that he had survived and been admitted to a hospital in Srinagar. They said their mother and sister were waiting outside, and wanted to consult him on what could be done legally. Andrabi asked them to meet him in the High Court. Just then, his brother Manzoor, who had gone to the doctor, returned. He told Andrabi that the only people waiting outside were three armed men. At this, the men left hurriedly in a taxi. The family made a note of the registration number—JKT 1988.

The next day, the same people came knocking at the door. By now, Andrabi was apprehensive. He had good reason to be. On 5 December 1992, Kashmiri Pandit and rights activist HN Wanchoo had left his house accompanied by two men who wanted him to come and reassure a mother whose son, they said, had been picked up by the security forces. A few hours later, Wanchoo was found dead, shot through the head, the upper back and the abdomen. On 22 April 1995, two unidentified men opened fire on Mian Abdul Qayoom, President of the Jammu & Kashmir Bar Association, leaving him seriously injured. They had come to him claiming to seek his help in a case.

Andrabi's wife was the one who went to speak to the men at the door. As she was telling the men that they should come to court to meet her husband, Andrabi went up to the attic with a camera. The men saw him clicking photographs, and started gesticulating. But neighbours had gathered by now and the men had to flee. The next day, Andrabi released their pictures to the newspapers

+++

Fifteen years later, I am sitting in the heart of Srinagar, under the shade of a chinar tree, listening to his brother Arshid talk of what happened then. He bears an uncanny resemblance to his brother, an aged version of the man in the photograph. He has related this story often in the past decade. "It was very difficult in the beginning,'' he speaks slowly, but with a certain gravity, weighing each word. He looks up, a wan smile playing on his face, ""¦but I have developed my defences now.''

In the days following the two visits, Andrabi spent much of his time at the High Court, arguing a case where he had sought to ensure that people detained in the state were not taken to jails outside J&K. The state had appealed the order and it had come up before a division bench of the High Court. Andrabi had asked Arshid to accompany him to court. At lunch, Andrabi pointed to the man sitting on an adjacent table, a notorious Ikhwani (surrendered militant working with the security forces) named Sikandar. Andrabi told Arshid the man had been shadowing him for some time. He said if he could be followed to the High Court there was no way he could be safe in the state, he needed to leave for a while.

"He stayed in Delhi for over a month. He met the press, talked to a few embassies, I think he annoyed the government further,'' says Arshid. In March, Andrabi came back to the Valley to be with his family for Eid.

On the day of Eid, 8 March, while heading home with his wife, his Maruti car was stopped by an Army contingent led by a Sikh officer. They seem to have been waiting for Andrabi. There were three vehicles parked there, a one-tonne Army truck that had ferried the 20 or so Armymen accompanying the officer, their officer's jeep and a private vehicle. Men wrapped in red blankets, their faces barely visible, were seated inside the private vehicle. Eyewitnesses later said they had been vetting all those stopped. Barely half an hour before Andrabi drove through, Arshid and Manzoor had taken the same route. They had been stopped. "I thought they were looking for some militant, but I was surprised at how closely they scrutinised me in particular before letting us through''.

Andrabi was not allowed through. He was asked to get out of the car and taken into custody. His wife, who could not drive, was left behind. She waved down an autorickshaw and tried to give chase, but the vehicles were moving too fast. The same evening, a case of abduction was filed at a nearby police station. The J&K Bar Association moved the High Court the next morning. The Army and the BSF filed replies denying Andrabi had been picked up by their men.

On 27 March, 19 days after the abduction, a college student named Abid Hussain, a resident of Kursu Rajbagh, a locality that lies by the Jhelum, went to the banks of the river early in the morning. According to his deposition, he saw a body floating down the river. It got entangled with the lines of two boats anchored ahead and drifted towards the bank. Soon, more people gathered there and pulled the body ashore. The upper half of the torso was covered with sackcloth tied around the waist by a rope. As soon as the sackcloth was removed, most of the men there were able to identify the body—Jaleel Andrabi had lived in that neighbourhood for over a decade at one point of time. Andrabi had been shot in the head and his body bore marks of injuries that suggested he had been beaten and tortured. The post-mortem suggested he had died about two weeks before the body was found.

Arshid was among the people called to identify the body. For ten days, he tells me, they did not tell Andrabi's children, a son and two daughters, anything, "We sent them away for ten days to an aunt's house.'' He falls silent. "When they came back, his son, who must have been barely six or seven, came and sat on my lap. He turned to me and asked: 'Why was my father's body fished out of the Jhelum?' He had read everything that had been written about the case.''

A passing shower has forced us to move inside. I know that after Andrabi's death, Arshid has married his brother's widow and raised the children. He continues to speak. I don't see his face clearly in the dark. Only his voice, speaking of the past, carries to me: "I explained everything to him, as much as I could. Since that day, he has never asked me anything about his father, nothing at all.''

Later in the day, I walk down to the banks of the Jhelum at Kursu Rajbagh, past the trees that line the bank. I find two dumper trucks parked beside a row of boats tethered to the bank. The boats are piled high with sand. At the bottom of each boat lies a large metal corkscrew used to scoop sand out of the riverbed. Men stagger from the boat to the truck with loads of sand.

Nasir Ahmed says he has been plying these boats for several years. Each truckload of sand brings him Rs 1,700, it sells for much more in the market. He has heard of the Andrabi case. Even fifteen years later, it is hard to find someone in Srinagar who has not heard of it.

Nasir tells me the body was found on this stretch of the river, not far from where we are standing. He seems to suggest there was nothing exceptional about what happened to Andrabi. "Ever so often, when we bring sand back to the bank, we find remains of the dead. Skulls turn up often enough, I think we found the last one in March this year. More rarely, we used to find thighbones, sometimes with flesh still attached to the bone.''

He pauses a moment to think about what he is saying: "Mostly, they are the remains of the men who were killed between 1991 and 1996—we don't know how many died. The Army cantonment lies just upstream and bodies used to be dumped into the river from the bridge.'' He comes back to the present, struggling to make sense of this absurd reality: "We do not go out on the river after the evening azaan; it is the time of the djinns."

Soon after Andrabi's body was found, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed by the J&K Police; it did not take them long to connect Sikandar to the abduction. On 5 April 1996, just about a week after Andrabi's body had been found, seven more bodies were found at Pampora. Among the dead was Sikandar Ganie, the Ikhwani. When the police spoke to Sikandar's widow, Hameeda, she told them that Sikandar and his associates had been summoned by another Ikhwani, Mohammed Ashraf Khan alias Umer, to an Army camp in Rawalpora, headed by a man named Major Avtar Singh of 35 Rashtriya Rifles.

Six months later, the police were finally able to trace Umer. His statement was recorded before a magistrate and it implicated Avtar Singh in the murder of not just Jaleel Andrabi, but also Sikandar and his associates. According to Umer, in March 1996, Avtar Singh and Sikandar picked up a man dressed in a suit-and-tie and brought him to the camp. They were accompanied by "Suken, Balbir Singh, Waid, Doctor who was an Army Doctor and Mushtaq Haider etc.'' The statement is chilling. Clearly a number of men at the Army camp were involved in the crimes Avtar Singh is charged with, including the doctor. It should have been relatively easy to find out who these men were, but none of the others has been named for the murders. It is quite likely that many of them continue to serve in the Army.

Umer goes on to state that the man in the suit argued with these men, questioning why he had been abducted and brought to the Army camp. He was beaten up and locked in a room. Shortly after, Avtar Singh came and told Umer that the man they had picked up was a famous advocate named Jaleel Andrabi, who works against the Army. The same evening, he said, he heard cries and shouts from the room where Andrabi was confined. Then there was the sound of a gunshot.

In much of the rest of the country, the idea of an Army camp brings to mind images of cantonments and barracks. In Srinagar, during those years, a camp was nothing more than a large house or two taken over by the Army. Each camp exercised jurisdiction over a few square kilometres, but in those few square kilometres the soldiers exercised complete authority.

Today, the Army has moved out of Srinagar and Rawalpora is an affluent colony in the south of the city. When we ask our way to the camp we are misdirected a few times. Houses have come up where there were fields just a decade ago and the old paths do not lead anywhere. We stop at a grocery shop, where an old man sitting behind the counter points to a road leading to the colony.

We walk down a narrow lane, it seems narrower still because of the high boundary walls that loom on either side. The houses are large, signs of a new affluence, but the past has not completely disappeared. An old temple covered in ivy, walled in, stands at the entrance of Gali no. 3, which leads to the local mosque. Gali no. 4 is a right turn from the lane, and then takes a sharp left, parallel to the lane. As we turn, the two houses facing us are what once made up the Army camp where Andrabi was killed. One of the houses seems recently refurbished, there is work underway on the other. We decide not to trouble the new owners; there are some things they don't need to know.

Umer, according to the police files, used to run a small shop—perhaps no different from the shop where we were given directions to the camp—supplying bread to the camp. This got him in trouble with one group of militants. He turned to another group, only to then start work for the police. Several such switches later, he became part of the very camp to which he once used to supply bread.

For the first few days after Andrabi was shot, Umer said, the Ikhwanis did not turn up at the camp. A worried Avtar Singh sent him along with Suken and Balbir Singh in search of Sikandar. They located him and told him to report to the camp. The next day, Sikandar came to the camp accompanied by three men and a driver. They were told to leave their weapons at the gate on the pretext that the commanding officer was expected on a visit. They sat down to drink with Avtar Singh, and after an hour or so, were asked to come into the dining room. Umer, who claimed to be standing on the verandah, saw Avtar Singh, the Army Doctor and the other men named earlier overpower Sikandar and his colleagues and tie them up with ropes. They then shut the dining room door. The next day Sikandar and his colleagues were found dead.

On 10 April 1997, the SIT set up by the J&K police filed its report before the court, naming Avtar Singh. A colonel representing the Army told the court that Major Avtar Singh was acting in his personal capacity. He further added that Avtar Singh had served only for a year in Kashmir and had been 'disembodied' from service. He said he originally belonged to the Territorial Army 103 posted at Ludhiana. The court directed the Union government to impound the Major's passport or prevent him from being issued one. The court also asked for the service files of the Major within four weeks, so that final orders could be passed. Before the next hearing, the two judges were transferred.

A year later, in 1998, even as the J&K police was still claiming that the Major could not be traced, I easily managed what the J&K police apparently could not. I interviewed him in Ludhiana at the Territorial Army barracks while working for The Indian Express. I do not have my notes anymore and I do not remember the details. The interview was never printed. All I remember is that he was clean-shaven at the time and he told me he was being made a scapegoat.

In 2000, the SIT finally told the court what should have been verified much earlier—that Avtar Singh was still in Ludhiana. Soon after, despite the court orders, Avtar Singh was able to obtain a passport and leave the country for Canada, and then Selma, California, where he runs a transport service, driving his own truck. In February this year, his wife reported him for an incident of domestic violence. When the Selma police checked his records, they found there was an Interpol Red Corner notice against his name.

It is not difficult to locate his Selma number, and he is the one who answers the telephone. He begins by telling me what he told me 13 years ago in Ludhiana—that he was being made a scapegoat.

"Am I stupid to make sure I murder people in the presence of this man named Umer? He very conveniently seems to have witnessed everything I did. Would I trust a man like him, a surrendered militant, one who had worked for the police and everybody else at some point or the other?"

But Umer's confession is corroborated by other evidence. He mentions the death of Ghulam Qadir, a resident of Batamaloo in Srinagar. When we drive there, the local butcher directs us to Ghulam Qadir's house. Only Qadir's daughter is at home. She sends a young boy along to show us the way to the shop, Benison Estate and Construction, where her brothers handle the business they have inherited from their father.

On the night of 18 February 1996, they say three armed men came to the house and asked Ghulam Qadir to accompany them. One of them was Major Avtar Singh, the other Umer. They are sure of the identities of the men because they were later able to identify them. They never saw their father again.

They say the motive was extortion. Their father owned three shops at Lalbagh, everyone in the locality knew he was well off. Someone else in the neighbourhood had also been picked up and released after Rs 2 lakh was paid. They paid money as well, but their father never returned. Years of searching have not led them anywhere, their father's body was never found, they don't know what happened to him. But Umer's testimony is clear: "Major Avtar Singh, Sukan, Balbir Singh, Waid and Doctor'' eliminated him ""¦and I do not know where his body was dumped''.

Perhaps most damaging to Avtar Singh's claim is an old photograph lying with the family. It is also part of the police records. It shows a group of Armymen in uniform sitting in the snow, posing with their SLRs. At the centre of the picture are Major Avtar Singh and Umer.

Avtar Singh is on much stronger ground, though, when he claims, "I am being made a scapegoat. Since I was originally from the Territorial Army, it is easy to disown me and deny the culpability of other organisations.'' Clearly, he did not act alone, but no other Army personnel has been charged with the murder. Neither is there a motive that ties Avtar Singh to Andrabi; none of the cases Andrabi had taken up related directly to Avtar Singh. In his confessional statement, Umer has added that Avtar Singh told him that he had killed Andrabi because "other officers had entrusted him with the job''.

The police's own investigation connects the taxi (registration no. JKT 1988) and the photographs taken by Andrabi to another group of surrendered militants, who operated under the name of the Tiger group of the Jawabrara camp. They took directions from a Major in military intelligence (MI), who went by the name of Ashok Clifton, alias Bulbul, who has often been confused with Avtar Singh due to the complicated nature of the case. Clearly, then, there was a senior MI operative involved in the intimidation of Andrabi just a month before his death.

Avtar Singh asks, "How come this Major Clifton from the MI suddenly appears in the SIT report and then is not mentioned again?''

In March this year, Justice Bilal Nazki, one of the judges who ensured an SIT was set up to investigate Andrabi's murder, finally spoke about the case to the media. Nazki, who retired as Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court, said: "In 1997, when I was hearing the case, we had set up a Special Investigation Team of the J&K Police to probe the murder.

Major Avtar Singh should have faced trial. Soon after I passed orders in the case, I was transferred to Hyderabad. The High Court did not take any interest afterwards."

On 30 May this year, a Srinagar court directed the authorities, including the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), "Since a lot of time has already got wasted without any fruitful results... it is impressed upon the authorities concerned to expedite the matter and make every endeavour to extradite the accused at the earliest, so that [the] majesty of [the] rule of law is not dented. This order should be forwarded to [the] foreign secretary, Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi"¦" According to a status report filed by IGP Crime, Kashmir, relevant documents have already been submitted to the foreign secretary, Ministry of External Affairs (vide number Pros-07/2011, 4 April 2011) but there has been no response so far. When Open contacted the MEA, we were promised a reply within the day, but four days later, at the time of going to press, we had not received a response.

If Major Avtar Singh was just a renegade acting on his own, the need to shift a High Court judge seems strange, as does this doggedness to ensure that he does not return to India. Even his escape from India seems to have been made possible with the complicity of the authorities. How otherwise was he issued a passport despite court orders?

One possibility is that a trial of the Major will seriously undermine arguments favouring sweeping powers for the Army in Kashmir and other insurgency areas. But even that does not quite explain the extent of the cover-up. In California, Avtar Singh remains sure he will not be extradited to India. "The law here is on my side. The case against me will not stand in court here.'' But, I ask him, what if the extradition does go through. He does not hesitate: "There is no question of my being taken to India alive, they will kill me.'' Who will, I ask him. "The agencies, RAW, military intelligence, it is all the same.'' He has also just told me about constant threats from the Al Qaida and I'm inclined to not take him seriously, but he goes on: "If the extradition does go through, I will open my mouth, I will not keep quiet.''

There can be no better reason to ensure he does return to India and stands trial in court.
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/the-man-who-knows-too-much

Here's a link to an article posted after the suicide.

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Posted on 11 June 2012
CURRENT AFFAIRS
JAMMU AND KASHMIR

"The murder of Jalil Andrabi doesn't only involve Avtar Singh," say the Andrabis

On June 13, the 16 year old case will come up for hearing at a Srinagar court

Riyaz Wani
Srinagar
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"It is divine justice," says Arshad Andrabi about the familicide by Major (retired) Avtar Singh at his home in California. Arshad is the brother of human rights lawyer Jalil Andrabi who was killed, allegedly by Singh, in Kashmir in 1996. However, Arshad is upset over Singh killing his own family. "If Government had moved to deliver justice in this case and extradited Singh from US, his family would have been saved".

On June 13, the 16-year-old murder case, in which Singh is the prime accused, will come up for hearing at a Srinagar court. Arshad says his family will not give up on the trial till they get justice. "The murder of Jalil Andrabi doesn't only involve Singh. There are others who are involved," says Andrabi. "They should also face justice".

The police chargesheet against Singh reveals that he was accompanied by "15-20 Army personnel and two renegade militants working for the Army". The other accused mentioned in a 2009 application by the Andrabi's family are: Dr Vaid, Balbir, Mushtaq and Hyder. The Special Investigation Team of JK Police in its status reports identifies the following as accused: Muhammad Afzal Shah, Nazir Ahmad Mir, Muzaffar Ahmad Sheikh and Muhammad Ashraf Khan.

"All of them are complicit in the murder," says Arshad. "We will pursue the trial against them".

Singh's murder of his family and suicide has shocked the Valley. Him taking his own life is equated with divine justice but there is also a sense of grief for his family. "The death of Major Avtar Singh, and the brutal killing of his family members, is an indictment of the Indian State. Singh had been allowed to leave the country, avoid extradition proceedings and run a business over 16 years," a reaction issued by Coalition of Civil Society, a civil rights group in Kashmir stated. "The State has effectively allowed for Major Avtar Singh to escape the rule of law, and in the process further innocent lives have been lost".

The CCS has demanded an impartial investigation into the crimes, that they alleged have been perpetrated in Jammu and Kashmir by Major Avtar Singh and his colleagues. "There should also be a probe into the circumstances under which he was allowed to leave the country, persons or institutions who may have supported him to escape the legal process, and persons or institutions responsible for delay in extraditing him," stated the CCS.

Hailing from Yamuna Nagar in Haryana, Singh who was posted in Valley troubled 90s, is alleged to have picked up 36-year-old lawyer-activist Jalil Andrabi on 8 March 8, 1996. The sequence of events that followed is a well known narrative in the Valley. Andrabi was driving home from the High Court with his wife Rifat when his car was stopped at Parraypora by a waiting army truck. A few government gunmen dragged him out of the car, threw a blanket on his head and drove away. Andrabi's trussed-up, decomposed body was recovered from the Jhelum river on March 27, 1996. His eyes had been gouged out. The autopsy report said Andrabi had probably been killed 14 days before his body was recovered.

A pro-government gunman Muhammad Ashraf Khan alias Omar Bhai who had recorded his statement under section 164 is an eye-witness to Army's custody of Andrabi. Khan worked as an informer for Singh."In his statement Khan has talked about hearing Andrabi being tortured by Singh," said Arshad. "He also says Jalil was shot in the head, his body driven in a car and thrown into Jhelum".

However, it is the statement of Khan's wife Dilshada which is more damning. She talks about many more murders by Singh beside that of Andrabi: "Major Avtar Singh killed more people from Mahjoor Nagar, Jawahar Nagar and Batamaloo (Srinagar localities). He kidnapped Jalil Andrabi and tortured him. His body was put in a bag and thrown into the Jhelum," reads Dilshada statement. She had stayed with her husband at the army camp. "Major Singh was looking worried [after the murder]. He had close relations with my husband and sent him to Jammu so that the heinous crime he has committed may not get exposed," stated Dilshada.

Apart from Andrabi's murder, Singh had five cases of murder and kidnapping registered against him in Srinagar which included killing of one Balbir Singh, a tailor from Mahjoor Nagar, in 1997. Avtar Singh was also an accused in the 1997 murder of one Imtiaz Wani of Ikhrajpora and was being sought in the murder of five others, who incidentally were part of his informers' team when he picked up Andrabi. The five were identified as Sikander Ganai, Muhammad Ramzan, Mushtaq Ahmad Hajam, Muhammad Assad Lone and Muhammad Afzal Malik. There is also a kidnapping case against Singh and his group of counter-insurgents.

Singh was shifted out of Valley to Karnal in Haryana where he was posted in a regiment of Territorial Army. A JK police team which went to arrest him on JK High Court's order in 2000 returned empty-handed. After his retirement from army, Singh fled to Canada and from there to California in United States. This was despite the fact that JK High Court on 10 April 1997 had issued the order for the immediate impounding of his passport. "Despite court orders Union Home Ministry and Ministry of External Affairs issued the travel documents to Singh and helped him flee the country," Hafizullah Mir, counsel for the Andrab family told TEHELKA.

In US, there was an Interpol warrant against Avtar Singh, but couldn't be executed as there was no request from the Indian government for his extradition. In February 2011 Singh briefly invited media attention after he was arrested by the police in Selma, California following a domestic violence complaint by his wife. Interpol promptly informed the JK's Crime Department, Interpol's nodal agency for in the state, about his arrest. However, this time too no request was made for his extradition.

Riyaz Wani is a Special Correspondent with Tehelka.
[email protected]
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Ws110612JAMMU.asp
 
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ejazr

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Re: Ex-Indian Army officer wanted in 1996 murder kills himself and family in Californ

The Hindu : Opinion / Editorial : The truth must still be told

"Iwill open my mouth," Major Avtar Singh had told the journalist, Hartosh Singh Bal, last year. "I will not keep quiet.'' This weekend, Singh, facing extradition proceedings for his alleged role in the brutal 1996 murder of Kashmiri human rights activist and lawyer Jalil Andrabi, shot himself, his wife, and their two young children, at their home in Selma, California. In weeks to come, theories about what led Singh to engage in his savage act will likely proliferate. There is only one fact, though, that we can be certain of: no one will ever now know what he might have told a judge about the murder of Andrabi. The basic facts about the Andrabi case, though, are well known. In 1996, Jammu and Kashmir Police investigators established during a High Court-mandated inquiry that Andrabi was kidnapped from his home by a unit of former terrorists working with the Indian Army. The lawyer had been involved in documenting instances of human rights abuses by the security forces. Days later, his mutilated body was found floating in the Jhelum. The five men alleged to have killed Andrabi also turned up dead days later. From the custodial testimony of Muhammad Ashraf Khan, part of the covert unit working with Major Singh, police learned that the officer had executed Mr. Andrabi. For his part, Singh sought to discredit Mr. Khan's testimony, saying it was implausible that he would have made a murder confession to a man who was not his friend.

Even if Singh will now never be brought to trial, there are questions the Indian government needs to answer about the Andrabi case. Major Ashok 'Bulbul' Clifton, Singh's superior at the time of the murder, has never been formally questioned. It has also never been explained how Major Singh succeeded in leaving the country, and why the government repeatedly stalled judicial efforts to locate him. These questions, among others, are important not just in and of themselves, but also because of what they mean for the future of Jammu and Kashmir. Last year, former Orissa High Court Chief Justice Bilal Nazki, who had earlier ordered the investigation into Andrabi's death, said the case symbolised "what is wrong with Delhi's approach to Kashmir." "There is demand for a solution to Kashmir outside the ambit of the Constitution," Justice Nazki said, "but if the government gives people all the rights enshrined in the Constitution and puts in place effective systems, this place will change." He is right. For many, this appeal might seem utopian — but making sure the truth about Jalil Andrabi's murder doesn't die with the killings in Selma will be a small step in that direction.
 

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