The report of the army court of inquiry contradicts the claim by locals and also the statement of the army commander on the ground. Though the army statement has claimed that the dead were poachers, the locals and family members of the deceased, children among them, have said that they were just ordinary villagers. Locals have also claimed that the women, who had entered the conservation area to collect bark of the Kaulo tree, were first raped and then shot dead to possibly cover up the rape. Prakash Deuja, commander of the Jwala Dal Battalion that guards the Park, had admitted to Nagarik, sister publication of Republica, that the women were killed by army personnel who mistook them for poachers.
We really don´t know what exactly happened on the ground but circumstantial evidence suggests that the unsuspecting women were killed mistakenly. The postmortem report rules out rape but it would be premature, if not wrong, to assume that the women were members of a poaching gang. The manner in which the army publicized the ´findings´ of its court of inquiry also raises suspicions about the incident. Typically, an army court of inquiry doesn´t work so fast-- one such inquiry is yet to make public its report on Major Niranjan Basnet´s return from UN Peace Keeping Operations in Chad, months after the formation of the inquiry. Moreover, the cabinet has already formed a committee, led by Joint Attorney General Saroj Gautam, to investigate the killings. The army statement seems to be aimed at influencing the investigations of the Gautam committee. How can the army give a clean chit to its personnel when the cabinet-formed committee is still investigating matters? The incident has become all the more mysterious following the statement by army headquarters, and it surely calls for a thorough and independent investigation.
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