New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea made by over 300 armed forces personnel challenging filing of FIRs against certain personnel over some deaths in Manipur during military operations while the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Acts was in force in the state.Two FIRs were filed against certain officers in Manipur in connection with some deaths in what locals alleged were fake encounters. The officers are facing murder charges in the case. These FIRs were filed consequent to an elaborate exercise ordered by the court in which hundreds of such alleged cases from the state were examined. FIRs were filed subsequently in only those cases in which the officers had been indicted by an enquiry committee or a judicial probe.The army personnel were being “persecuted” and proceeded against for performing duties in disturbed areas, their lawyer Aishwarya Bhatti argued in her petition.The officers also protested, saying this would affect their morale, but the court had earlier made light of this statement. The case was argued at length first by senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi . On Friday, SG Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, backed their plea. Mehta argued that there was a need for a mechanism to ensure that soldiers are not shaken when fighting terrorists.The bench retorted: “Who is stopping you?” The bench said that it was an issue for the government to debate and not the court to decide.The top court had in a ruling on July 8, 2016, ruled that the mere fact that the law was in force in a disturbed area would not give blanket immunity to the forces from any unjustified deaths.But in this case, the court drew the line at unjustified deaths, implying that personnel would be answerable for any disproportionate force used by them in the disturbed areas. In the first instance, the central government urged the top court to review the ruling. But the court stuck to its stand.In the second round of litigation, a batch of senior army officers led by Col Amit Kumar, urged Justices Madan B. Lokur and UU Lalit to recuse themselves from hearing the case on the grounds that they had jeopardised any chances of the officers in the dock in Manipur being declared innocent by any court of law.The bench rejected this demand too. Eventually the bench rejected their plea on merit on Friday.The army personnel had in their petition argued that they now faced questions from juniors in the chain of command on whether they should fight the proxy war as per their military training and operational realities or as per yardsticks of peacetime operations.