Roy Mathew, an Indian soldier working with Army, who came into notice after a sting operation in February which complained about orderly behavior of officers in Indian Army, was found dead in his barrack in suspicious situations. Army has maintained its stand in terming it as a suicide, along with reportedly claiming that the soldier was mentally disturbed.
According to a report in Times of India, he was found hanging to a ceiling in one of the rooms in Deolali Cantonment area of Maharashtra. Doctors suspected that he might have died before 3 days of noticing and in a busy cantonment area, it is highly unlikely that a dead soldier is noticed for over 3 days.
Another report in Hindustan Times stated that the parents of 33 year old soldier suspected foul play and have requested to order a probe into his demise. There has not been a response yet from the army on that.
Death of Roy Mathew comes after a series of videos surfaced on social media exposing the harassment and poor working conditions in various forces including army, CRPF and BSF. The series started with a BSF soldier, Tej Bahadur Yadav uploaded a series of videos complaining about low standard food given to the soldiers patrolling borders in Kashmir. After that, another CRPF soldier complained to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about not getting facilities similar to Army and then the video was surfaced in which Roy Mathew had alleged the army officers to use soldiers in their person chores like getting the shoes polished, taking kids to school and taking their dogs for walking.
On January 15th, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat had warned the soldiers of disciplinary action if any such video is uploaded online and asked those to get in touch with the authorities if they had issues.