NEW DELHI, May 13: For two days Indian reports were describing it as a scuffle or an incident between lowly enlisted men and upper-crust army officers in Ladakh, but on Sunday The Hindu suggested it might have been a revolt, which had got the army brass worried.

“Forty-eight hours after troops of the Ladakh-based 226 Field Regiment staged a revolt against officers they said were responsible for the brutal beating of an enlisted man, the army is facing hard questions whether its colonial-era institutions are generating a crisis within its ranks,” The Hindu report said.

It said the men marched through the town of Nyoma late on Thursday night, armed with rods and knives, seeking to hunt down five Major-rank officers they said were responsible for the brutal beating of Suman Ghosh — an enlisted man assigned as a personal valet.

“The men also staged protests, using loudspeakers to shout slogans condemning the officers and raise nationalist slogans. The fighting left at least three soldiers injured,” the Hindu said.

It said Leh-based 14 Corps Commander Lieutenant-General Ravi Dastane hammered out a deal early on Saturday with the soldiers — a deal which promises officers who used beatings against enlisted men will be punished, in return for the soldiers’ relocating to their base at Thiksey.

In New Delhi, according to the report, the Army Headquarters described the clash — the worst of its kind since some Sikh soldiers mutinied in 1984 — as “an incident of indiscipline”, not a mutiny. The army has set up a court to inquire into the incident, it said.