Sir: Indian government has awarded gallantry awards to Major Aditya Kumar (Shaurya Chakra) and his cohorts, who had killed several stone-throwing Kashmiri protesters in Budgam in November 2017. Kumar and Rifleman Aurangzeb were awarded the Shaurya Chakra, and Sepoy Vrahma Pal Singh was awarded the Kirti Chakra. The occupied-Kashmir police had registered a case against the awardees. The registration was in keeping with Supreme Court’s guidelines to curb fake encounters and extrajudicial killings by Indian army under the shelter of Armed Forces Special Powers Act. To scuttle the First Information Report, Indian army ‘defended the operation against a group of 100-200 stone-pelters’. The Army patronised Aditya’s father to move the Indian Supreme Court to quash the FIR. In another case, 300 army officers filed a petition in the Supreme Court to justify killing civilians in ‘insurgency hit areas’ including Manipur. The petition was meant to scuttle India’s Supreme Court’s directive ‘to file charge sheets, in a time-bound manner’ against Army officers involved in the Manipur extra-judicial killings in which over 1,500’ innocents were allegedly killed, after being branded as insurgents’. The Hindu dated August 14, 2018 stated that ‘The Defence Ministry seemed unperturbed at the manner in which over 300 Army officers approached the Supreme Court seeking protection from prosecution in insurgency-hit areas’. Rewarding military architects of fake encounters and extra-judicial killers makes a mockery of India’s claim of being a progressive democracy. MOHAMMAD SA’AD MALIK Rawalpindi Published in Daily Times, August 17th 2018.