Pune ex-officer killed on footpath had earlier refused help from Army: official
The Army had made several attempts to help him but he always refused help and preferred to live on footpath. (AP Photo/File) The Army had made several attempts to help him but he always refused help and preferred to live on footpath. (AP Photo/File)
A former officer of the Army’s Corps of Electronic and Mechanical Engineers, who was found dead on the footpath outside the main gate of the Southern Command Officers’ mess on Koyaji Road here, had refused the Army’s offer for help on several occasions over the years help and “preferred to live on the footpath”, an officer said on Saturday.
Ravindra Bali, 65, who was a National Defence Academy (NDA) graduate, was murdered by two unidentified men in the early hours of Friday. The police are yet to find a murder motive or identify the assailants.
Last year, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, an NDA alumnus himself, had tried to offer Bali help after learning about his condition, but Bali could not be found at the spot he was usually seen at.
According to sources in the Army, Bali had faced a court martial and was dismissed from service in 1989 over allegations of ‘moral turpitude’. Details of the case were not immediately available.
“Bali joined NDA in 1970 and did training at the College of Military Engineering in Pune. He was commissioned into Corps of EME around 1975. He faced a court martial over moral turpitude and was cashiered (officially dismissed from service) around 1989,” an Army officer told The Sunday Express on conditions of anonymity.
The officer said, “His first wife is known to have committed suicide. His second wife also left him after a brief period. For some time, he was in Gujarat. Later, he is also known to have been involved in a dispute over an ancestral property. We know that the last job he did was in a BPO – after that, he had started living on the footpath. The Army had made several attempts to help him but he always refused help and preferred to live on footpath.
“Someone from the Army mess used to give him food for at least once a day.”
Inspector S K Yadav of Lashkar police station, who is probing the case, said, “We are working on several angles and have not yet been able to zero in on one motive. Attempts are on to identify the assailants.”
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