On December 4, 2021, as Nagas and the world prepared to welcome Christmas festivities, tragedy struck. Thirteen innocent villagers working in coal mines were brutally gunned down as they were returning home to Oting from nearby Tiru, by the Alpha unit of the 21 Para Commando battalion. Another civilian was killed in a firing incident by security forces the next day as a result of violent demonstration in Mon town. The case was taken up by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Nagaland Police who did a painstaking job to unearth the facts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the point of view of justice and truth, it was a fit case for prosecuting the army major the unit commander and 30 other jawans of motive to murder. The state police pursued the case after six months of painstaking investigation and sought permission for prosecution but the Ministry of Defence (MoD) did not respond. Then the wife of the accused army officer had filed a petition for quashing the SIT report and in April 2022, the Central government refused to accord sanction to prosecute the Army men involved in the botched up ambush at Oting under the insulation of the Armed Forces (Special) Powers Act 1958.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then again, to give legality against prosecution, in July 2022, the Supreme Court had stayed prosecution of the Army personnel belonging to a special forces on the pleas from the wives of the accused, who claimed that their husbands were being prosecuted without the state obtaining mandatory sanction for prosecution. The innocent civilians were returning home to be with their families after earning enough to spend Christmas. According to a report, the leader(major) of the army personnel involved in the incident was cautioned by his sepoy through a known source that the underground factions were not in Tiru bridge, but were operating from Wapnyu side, which was a different location. However, instead of taking cognisance of the information and adhering to standard operation procedure such as -ordering the suspect vehicle to stop or erecting a road block, the army unit opened fire soon as the Bolero came near and killed six unarmed labourers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second incident occurred when the villagers waiting for the victims heard gunfire and went to verify. They saw the army men loading dead bodies of their near and dear ones. The army unit tried to hide by claiming that they were taking the deceased to hospital. This incensed the villagers who started attacking the armymen with daos where one died of fatal injury. Another seven villagers were mowed down by weapons fire from the commando unit. The next day, a civilian died after a firing incident in Mon when public protested against the Oting massacre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a significant move that has raised hopes that the victims of the Oting massacre will be given justice when those who are responsible for their deaths are brought to book and awarded due punishment as per the law of the land. The Supreme Court has issued notice on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to respond to the plea of the Nagaland government for prosecution of the accused office and personnel of the Alpha Unit of the 21 Para commandos. Hopefully justice will prevail of AFSPA, a draconian law that has been protecting such uniformed personnel from being held accountable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On December 4, 2021, as Nagas and the world prepared to welcome Christmas festivities, tragedy struck. Thirteen innocent villagers working in coal mines were brutally gunned down as they were returning home to Oting from nearby Tiru, by the Alpha unit of the 21 Para Commando battalion. Another civilian was killed in a firing incident […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}