New Delhi: An Indian air force officer was court martialled for a missile attack on a friendly Mi-17 helicopter on February 27, 2019, as a result of which six servicemen and a civilian were killed.
According to a report published in Indian media, a General Court Martial (GCM) in New Delhi ordered the dismissal of Group Captain Suman Roy Chowdhury, the then Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Srinagar Air Force Station.
The helicopter crashed in Budgam district of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), the report added.
The missile attack happened the same day when Pakistan Air Force (PAF) shot down two Indian fighter planes after they violated its airspace during Operation Swift Retort while responding to a Pakistani aerial mission on targets inside IIOJK.
The Pakistani forces captured IAF pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who was released only after two days in captivity in a peace gesture from Pakistan.
According to the report, Chowdhury was held guilty on five of the nine charges. He was held guilty of not obeying the general order issued by the air headquarters as he had permitted the Mi-17 to get airborne from Srinagar without the “Identification Friend or Foe” on.
He was also held guilty of assigning an inbound flying object to the missile unit on Feb 27, 2019. “As a consequence, the assigned flying target, which actually was friendly copter Mi-17, was shot down by a Spyder missile at 10:14am. The mishap caused a loss of Rs133.31 crore to the state,” the report said.
Meanwhile, Wing Commander Shyam Naithani, who was the senior air traffic control officer at the time of the incident, had been acquitted of four charges and had gotten “a severe reprimand for one charge”.
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