A soldier has been sentenced to life imprisonment by an army court martial for gunning down his three senior colleagues in Jammu and Kashmir in October last year.

The court, for the first time, has held that the motive for the killings was “grave provocation”, as the three army personnel who were shot had shown continued “deviant factual behaviour” towards the accused, an army official said.

The court martial held in Northern Command headquarters in Udhampur, while holding the soldier, a signalman, guilty of shooting his colleagues, observed that the act was committed under “grave provocation which undermined the soldier’s self-esteem and self-holding”.

The signalman, who was not named, was just a month-old recruit when he turned his assault carbine on two hawaldars, including his platoon hawaldar and a clerk lance naik, on October 21 last year.

This is the third case of such killings, in which the judgement has been pronounced by army court on fast-track basis in the past one month.