India Dismisses Charges Against Soldiers in Killings NEW DELHI - The Indian Army last week dismissed charges against five soldiers in a long-running, infamous case in which soldiers were accused of rounding up five Kashmiri men, dressing them in fatigues, then shooting and burning them. The soldiers said the men were Pakistani militants, but locals have insisted for years that they were innocent civilians - a claim lent support by an Indian government investigation. The army's decision late Thursday in what is widely known as the Pathribal case led to expressions of outrage by Kashmiri politicians and rights groups. They say it underscores the army's implacable opposition to efforts to account for the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared during the long conflict in the region with Pakistan and Kashmiri separatists. "A matter as serious as Pathribal can't be closed or wished away like this," said Kashmir's chief minister, Omar Abdullah. Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, a leader of Kashmir's opposition party, said the army's decision was a huge setback for reconciliation efforts between the Indian government and those seeking Kashmiri independence. Indian law gives soldiers blanket immunity from prosecution in civilian courts for crimes, including rape, committed in the part of Kashmir the country controls. So unless the army disciplines its own, which is extremely rare, soldiers cannot be held accountable. This case, which dates to an episode in 2000, is infamous in part because the efforts to conceal the men's identities were so amateurish and the facts so well established by India's own civilian investigators. On March 25 of that year, army officials announced that in a "surgical operation" one of its units had encountered and killed five mercenaries from a Pakistani militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, who the army said were responsible for a massacre of 36 Sikhs five days earlier. But villagers insisted almost immediately that the five were not Pakistanis but locals snatched from their homes. Protests against the army grew until panicked police officers fired on a peaceful march, killing nine and injuring 35. Activist groups have long said the army has not only sometimes mistaken civilians for militants, but also sometimes killed locals, claiming they were militants in order to receive promotions and financial rewards. Facing growing outrage, officials promised an inquiry, and the bodies of the five alleged militants were exhumed. Because the bodies were only partly burned, investigators discovered that the men's civilian clothes were hidden under fatigues. A forensic team sent DNA samples to a Hyderabad lab, but the lab reported to the police that someone had switched the samples, a report the police kept secret for a year. The tests were eventually redone, establishing beyond doubt, according to lab scientists, that the men "were not foreign terrorists, as claimed by the forces who led the operations, but they were innocent civilians." In 2003, the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's F.B.I., accused the soldiers in court of abduction, murder, conspiracy and destruction of evidence. The army appealed, arguing that Indian law protected soldiers from prosecution. In 2012, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the army could choose between court-martialing the soldiers or allowing them to be prosecuted in civilian courts. The army chose court-martial but announced Thursday night that it had dismissed the charges for lack of evidence, despite the exhaustive inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation. "The army does not want justice," Parveena Ahanger, chairwoman of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, said in a phone interview. The Kashmiri people have nothing but despair. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir. The once considerable affinity for Pakistan in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where Muslims predominate, has receded in recent years along with Pakistan's declining international and economic status, but many Kashmiris there still yearn for independence.