Marijuana slur forces ex-colonel to plan self-immolation

Court-martialled and having served a prison term, he says, there is no other way out

Marijuana slur forces ex-colonel to plan self-immolation

Court-martialled and having served a prison term, he says, there is no other way out

He had fought pitched battles with militants and drug mafia as the commanding officer of an elite Army unit in the hostile terrain of the northeastern state of Assam but now he is planning to immolate himself to defeat "friends who have turned against him".

"There isn't anything left in me to look forward in life, neither the pride of being a soldier who had vowed to fight for his country nor any hope from the government for justice," said ex-Colonel Balwant Singh Barari, who was court-martialled for having alleged links with the Assam drug mafia, exposed after a truck laden vehicle with Marijuana was caught.

Barari was sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment that was later curtailed for reasons unknown to him. "I was commanding 21st battalion of the Assam Rifles in 1999 when the incident took place. The truck was caught in an area which was out of my jurisdiction but senior army officers and drug mafia connived to nail me down after a series of successful operations against the mafia by my unit in that area," Barari told MiD DAY.

Demanding an enquiry into his case and connivance of drug mafia and senior army officers, including bureaucrats, the former soldier is now planning to sit on an indefinite dharna outside the Parliament.

"I have already informed the Defence Ministry and every one concerned that if my demands are not met me and my family will immolate themselves in front of the Parliament. I don't care for anything now as I am already carrying the stigma of being a traitor," said the ex-colonel, commended for his action in the field.

He managed to arrest 400 militants with more than 100 weapons and seized more than 800 kilograms of Marijuana in his less than two-year-long tenure with Assam rifles in Manipur.

The demand for an enquiry into his case over the last nine years had led Barari to meet respective defence ministers and army chiefs and Prime Ministers.

"My unit was not even remotely involved with the operation in which the contraband-laden truck was caught but even then the local police arrested my jawans and made them confess on blank papers. The irregularities in the case started from the beginning as the officer who defended me in the court martial proceedings was selected by the army and not by me. I was put in a mental asylum in Dimapur and Guwahati and I was given electric shocks, claiming I have lost my mental balance," said Barari.

"Indian army and the government ruined my family and the future of my children," said Col Barari's wife Asha Barari. The family has shifted to their ancestral place in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh. Their elder son Rohit (28) had to drop out from class XII after he could not bear people calling his father a traitor while the second son Rahul is suffering from some congenital disability.

"I want the government to wake up and review the situation in the northeast where a handful of people from both Indian army and bureaucracy are hand-in glove with the militants. I also want the army to recognize my 31-year-long service to the nation," said Barari while showing the letters which he has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other senior political leaders.