59 trainee commandos bunk posting

New Delhi: In probably the first incident of its kind in paramilitary forces, a “mass bunking” has been reported in CRPF where 59 of its trainee commandos from the elite jungle warfare school in Jammu and Kashmir and a part of the force’s anti-Naxal squad CoBRA have gone missing.

The unit was to board a train from the Mughalsarai Station on Sunday night for deployment in Naxal infested areas of Bihar. The Central Reserve Police Force has launched a detailed probe into the incident and promised to take stern action against the personnel.

The unit was going for deployment after completing a five-week basic training  at the jungle warfare school near Srinagar. Sources said the entire group apparently decided to abandon their journey and instead decided to leave en masse either to their homes or go to some undisclosed destination.

The personnel did not inform any senior official before disappearing during the course of their journey. Sources said the CRPF top brass has taken a very serious note of the incident and has already ordered a Court of Inquiry as it was a case of “unauthorised absence” by the force.

Senior officials claimed that the jawans were scheduled to report at the headquarters of the 205th CoBRA unit in Gaya in Bihar on Monday for their further deployment for conducting special anti-Naxal operations in Bihar.

“A detailed inquiry has been ordered by the force headquarters in Delhi. The trainers and the havildar who was accompanying these commandos have got in touch with some of those who vanished from the train without informing their seniors. Some have promised to report for duty by tomorrow,” a senior official said.

It is yet to be ascertained as to how the men decided to make the slip en masse. The missing jawans were not carrying weapons though, officials said.

They added that maximum of the commandos who undertook this “mass bunking” hailed from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.