INDIA: An Indian army officer who faked his claim for a bravery medal was sacked and another suspended following a court martial that found them guilty of splashing tomato ketchup on civilians to make them look like "dead" separatist rebels killed in a fire fight.
An army spokesman yesterday said Col H S Kohli - now known in military circles as the "ketchup colonel" - presented photos of civilian corpses covered with tomato sauce to his corps headquarters as proof of his artillery regiment having killed separatist rebels in insurgency-ridden Assam state in north eastern India.
The civilians presented as "dead militants" had been employed by the Colonel's regiment and investigations by military intelligence revealed that no deaths ever took place, the court martial declared.
"It was indeed bizarre to find Col Kohli trying to claim a bravery award by using the staged photographs for the kills, which in fact did not take place at all," an army spokesman said.
A major serving under Col Kohli who connived in the fraud was suspended for five years.
The incident was discovered after an internal investigation was launched following a letter of complaint about the Colonel's unit claiming "militant kills" at Bada Nagadun near Silchar in southern Assam last year.
The colonel's dismissal, dubbed the "saucy scandal" by the local media, is the latest such incident to rock the Indian army.
In May the defence ministry admitted that officers from an elite Gurkha regiment had simulated the killing of enemy Pakistani soldiers in the Himalayas bordering Tibet in a bid to win gallantry awards.
The court martial into the Siachen "killings" is underway and has resulted in severe criticism of the army's policy of evaluating officer and unit performance on the basis of "militant kills".