Preliminary reports suggest that some altercation occurred between the jawans, but the exact cause is unclear.
o An Indo-Tibetan Border Police jawan fired at his three colleagues at a camp in the Udhampur district of Jammu and Kashmir.
o The jawan allegedly fatally shot himself soon after. There is still ambiguity if there was an exchange of fire or not.
An Indo-Tibetan Border Police jawan Saturday fired at three of his colleagues at a camp in Udhampur district of Jammu and Kashmir, before he fatally shot himself, receiving bullet wounds. A senior official said that the exact sequence of the event is still under investigation.
Earlier officials had stated that Constable Bhupendra Singh had shot himself dead after firing at his fellow jawans around 3:30 pm at the Devika Ghat community center in the district. But later an official stated there was no exact clarity on how Singh died.
ITBP officer said:
He said the constable could have been killed either in an exchange of fire, or he might have shot himself or was possibly hit by a ricocheting bullet fired from his own weapon. The exact sequence of the event is still being investigated, the senior ITBP officer said. The earlier official had said that the injured personnel have now been admitted to a hospital and are found to be out of danger.
He had also claimed that Singh had allegedly shot himself with his INSAS service rifle and died promptly, on the spot. The jawan belonged to the 8th battalion of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and was currently working under the ‘F’ company of the 2nd ad-hoc battalion of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) deployed in Jammu and Kashmir for security reasons.
Preliminary inputs suggested that some altercation occurred between the jawans leading to the gunfire. However, the exact cause that led up to the incident is still being investigated, the official said. In lieu of this, a court of inquiry has been ordered by the border guarding force to look further into the matter.
The ITBP is primarily tasked with guarding the 3,488 km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) bordering China apart from performing a variety of roles in the internal security domain of the country. The incident comes a day after news that an Army jawan shot himself fatally after killing another colleague and injuring two others in the Poonch district of the Union territory.
