Major Shikhar Thapa admonished the soldier for using his phone during work hours and the screen of the smartphone was damaged as he tried to confiscate it.
A heated altercation followed and the soldier fired at the officer with his automatic rifle, the sources said. Thapa died soon after of fatal gunshot wounds.
Incidents of soldiers killing their colleagues are not uncommon in India, particularly in Kashmir where the Indian forces are battling a violent separatist insurgency.
There were three cases of fatricide - a soldier killing a fellow soldier or a superior - in 2016, the Defence Ministry said in a statement placed in Parliament in March. And 101 soldiers had
committed suicide the same year.
In February 2014, a soldier gunned down five colleagues before shooting himself, also in Kashmir.
In the past, such incidents of shootings and suicides by troops have been blamed by army officials on soldiers' stress due to hostile condition and long separations from their families.
Representative image
An Indian soldier shot dead his superior after he was reprimanded for using a mobile phone while on the job in India-administered Kashmir, army sources said.
