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The Indian army is probing charges that officers of an elite regiment faked acts of gallantry to grab military awards while deployed in a Kashmir troublespot last year, officials said Friday. An army spokesman said an inquiry was underway at one of the military's mountain garrisons after a whistleblower in the Gurkha Rifles regiment accused his commander of faking attacks on non-existant Pakistani posts to win bravery awards. "An inquiry has just started into this... it is official," the spokesman told AFP. The spokesman declined to elaborate but senior military intelligence officials in New Delhi promised to "throw more light" later Friday into the scandal that threatens to engulf the Indian army's legendary Gurkha warriors. The Hindustan Times newspaper Friday said the incidents occurred before nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan enforced a border ceasefire in disputed Kashmir last November, including the the heavily-militarised Siachen glacier. It quoted whistleblower Major Surinder Singh saying he and other Gurkha officers at Siachen staged fake battles, blew up self-built bunkers and made "enemy kills" allegedly on orders of battalion commander, Colonel K.D. Singh. Major Singh said the commanding officer had told them to show "imagination and initiative in carrying out the acts," it said. "A third of 50 claimed 'kills' on the glacier last year could be fakes," the newspaper said, adding that Major Singh video-taped one of his soldiers after he was ordered to pose as a dead Pakistani to add authenticity to the claims. The paper said at one point Colonel Singh ordered the major to ensure out-of-focus video of the mock kills to back up claims of success. It said Major Singh, who was injured in the destruction of a bogus Pakistani bunker, blew the whistle on the fake kills in December last year after a disagreement with his commanding officer. India and Pakistani forces face each other across the 6,300-metre (20,700-foot) high glacier and until the ceasefire the rival armies regularly fought or pounded each other's posts with rockets, mortar and artillery. Siachen, which overlooks Pakistan and China, turned into the world's highest battlefield in 1987 in a bloody skirmish between Indian and Pakistani troops which left hundreds dead. But experts debate the strategic need to maintain positions on the glacier where temperatures of up to minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 Fahrenheit) claim more lives than combat. All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Quick Links
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