As graphic videos surfaced of the torture of civilians from a village in Poonch in a nearby army camp last week, leading to the deaths of three men, questions of how senior army officers either allowed or turned a blind eye to the atrocities are being raised.

Brigadier Padmasambhav Acharya, one of three officers moved out of their posts in the Rashtriya Rifles (RR) pending an internal inquiry, is in the eye of the storm. The RR is an elite counter-insurgency force raised in the Army in 1990 to fight the militancy in J&K.

The brother of Kargil war hero Major Padmapani Acharya who was posthumously conferred the Maha Vir Chakra, Brig Acharya made headlines in 2009 too. He shot down a dog that belonged to his neighbour in Pune in 2009 with a 12 bore gun.

He was arrested by the Khirkee police in Pune for the act. At the time he was Lieutenant Colonel, but it did not affect his promotion nor his posting to a sensitive location in Jammu & Kashmir, not far from the Line of Control.

Besides the Brigadier, Colonel Arun Thomas and Lt. Col R Kumar, the commanding officer and second in command of 48 RR that falls under Sector 13, were also removed from their posts last week, as the Army sought to damage control.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh travelled to Rajouri within the week to meet the families of the tortured victims and assured them of justice. The Army has handed out cheques for Rs 10 lakh to each victim's families, and the Administration has handed out cheques for Rs 20 lakh each.

How complicit the top officers were in the torture, what orders they gave, and if any of them was present at the scene will be established by the court of inquiry and the separate police investigation into the three murders. But the unprecedented removal of a sector commander is a pointer that the Army has some prima facie evidence of responsibility at the level of the officers.

The torture unleashed on civilians was not the only thing about 48 RR that was amiss.

In October, at the 48 Rashtriya Rifles base in Thanamandi, Rajouri, last week's custodial deaths, an officer of Major rank opened fire on his colleagues during a shooting practice session. He then ran into the armoury and locked himself in, lobbing grenades at his superior officers who tried to get him to surrender.

Five people were injured before the Major was caught and the eight-hour ordeal was brought to an end. A Court of Inquiry was set up to inquire into the incident. A defence spokesman described the Major's actions as an "unfortunate internal incident".

Then there were the military failures in the area, troubling for the high body count of army personnel including officers from the special forces. Only in November, Thanamandi was the location of another attack in which four soldiers were killed. The area had turned into a soft spot for attack against the army, with the body count racking up each time. The Rashtirya Rifles are an elite counter-insurgency force, and the repeated failures pointed to lessons not being learnt at the top levels.

Within the Army, there is talk that soldiers at the unit had become “casual” about their movements and violated standard operating procedures.

An ROP (road opening party) is supposed to have cleared the stretch of the Buffliaz-Thanamandi road on which the December 22 ambush took place before the reported two vehicles set off on their ill fated journey. This is a must before troop movement. The CoI will establish if the SOP was followed at all, and if it was, why it failed to detect the presence of militants who would attack the Army convoy minutes later.

While the Army has spoken about the presence of about 25 Pakistani/Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in the area -- more are said to be waiting in “terrorist launchpads” across the LoC in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir for a signal to cross over -- the reported “massive search operations” after each ambush in Rajouri and Poonch have not yielded results.

Separately but linked to the military setbacks, the apparent command and conrtol lapses at Sector 13 and 48 RR have raised questions about the procedures for vetting and gauging the suitability of soldiers for Rashtriya Rifles assignments. Despite the dangers involved, jawans seek RR postings because of an enhanced pay package, while officers use it to build their career. Two Army chiefs, Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag Singh and Gen M M Naravane, were once part of the RR.

Last week’s custodial deaths at Thanamandi took place a day after an ambush in which four soldiers were killed – two of the dead evidently had their heads decapitated by terrorists who are believed to have infiltrated across the LoC from Pakistan.

Reprisals against civilians following attacks on the Army are not new in Jammu & Kashmir's three decade long Pakistan-backed militancy with cross-border infiltrators. But no one believes that retributive actions against civilians are befit a professional army. And those who have led the Army in J&K know that apart from the rights violations, such actions also undermine decades of anti-insurgency work, a key part of which involves winning the hearts and minds of the local community.

“The [situation] should have been pre-empted at the level of Romeo Force GOC, Corps Commander and Army Commander. The unit had lost four soldiers the previous day. The temptation for reprisal is very strong when such incidents happen. The commanders should have been alert to the possibility, and sent a clear message down the line that such action will not be tolerated,” Lt. General H S Panag (retd), who was Northern Army commander from 2007-2008, told this reporter.

Lt Gen Panag referred to the term “strategic corporal” devised by US military thinkers, which he said must be understood at all levels of a professional army. It means that the actions of the junior most person in the hierarchy can have strategic ramifications, which is why "the higher chain of command must be alert and pre-empt", he said.

In this instance, the fact that the three men who died allegedly after torture by soldiers belonged to the Gujjar-Bakarwal tribe, is only likely to add to community's creeping alienation. The 2017 rape of the minor Bakarwal girl in Kathua, the move to remove the Bakerwals from their shelters in the forests, the Bill to include middle-and-upper caste Pahari community into the Scheduled Tribe category, as well as the communal atmosphere in Jammu are cited as key reasons for the growing unhappiness of this community. The torture and custodial deaths have widened the faultline.

Once, these tribals gave critical assistance to Indian security forces to fight terrorists that had entrenched themselves in the Poonch-Rajouri area in the 1990s. Today, the Army is less sure.

Panag pointed to the missed opportunity of setting the record straight with the Gujar community in the 2020 Amshipora fake encounter case, in which three Gujars were killed. The Armed Forces Tribunal pointed out that the court martial was based on a weak case and suspended his conviction by the tribunal's principal bench in Delhi, saying there was little evidence that he carried out the encounter without knowledge of his superiors.

The former Northern Army commander also pointed to the 2017 incident when Major Leetul Gogoi tied a local man to the bonnet of his jeep as a human chief, purportedly to protect election commission officials from stone-pelters during the 2017 parliamentary bye-election in Srinagar. Instead, Panag noted, the Major was given a “commendation card” by then Army chief General Bipin Rawat.