The facts of the incident in May 2012 are still a subject of investigation. There are conflicting versions, none of which is recorded in any police first information report (FIR). 

In one version, the wife of an officer, a major, complained of sexual harassment by a jawan in a police guesthouse at Nyoma in Ladakh. The Summary General Court Martial (SGCM) records that the soldier, a gunner, did molest the lady but that there was no FIR.

The jawan, who is from a village in Chhattisgarh, had been asked to switch on the immersion heater to warm water for the lady in the high-altitude station near the China frontier where it gets very cold. Twenty minutes later, when he went to switch off the heater, he found the lady in a compromising situation. He apologised for not having knocked. Fearing that he would spill the beans, the lady telephoned her husband and blamed the soldier.

This version is from a family friend of the soldier who said the 24-year-old had just been assigned as a personal help to the lady.

There is no dispute about the thrashing of the soldier by three officers in the hours that followed. The jawan was beaten black and blue after he was dragged to his lines and left confined with a junior commissioned officer in charge. Most of the unit was still in the Mahe field firing range.

Around 10pm, when most of the soldiers returned from night-firing, they found their comrade “almost dead”. They went to the officers and demanded that he be moved to a military hospital.

This is where the facts again get fuzzy. One account says the soldiers shouted slogans. Another, that an officer warned them: “You scum, you don’t know what we can do: we can throw him from the hills around here and declare him a deserter and no one will ever find out.” This enraged the soldiers.

Says Kiran Rautela, the sister of a soldier: “There was violence from both sides but only the officers have got off scot-free.”

A Leh police record says that soldiers holding flaming torches hunted for the three officers, who had fled, through the night. In the middle of the fracas, the commanding officer of the unit, Col Prasad Kadam, who was not at the spot but was on the way, fell and was injured. His wife Barkha Kadam, who was also in Nyoma, informed the brigade headquarters. Later in the night, the 3 Infantry Division, headquartered in Leh, sent reinforcements that surrounded the camp of the 226 Field Artillery Regiment, and its senior officers assured the soldiers of justice. 
The commanding officer, the thrashed soldier and two others were hospitalised.

The presence of the spouses at the field firing range, for what is essentially a war exercise, was against the rules.