MUZAFFAR RAINA
Srinagar, Dec. 14: The CBI today submitted an explosive report in the sensitive Shopian case, saying two women alleged to have been raped and murdered by security forces had drowned, and indicted 13 persons, among them doctors and lawyers, for fabricating evidence.
The bureau, which has been investigating the case since September after the May-end deaths triggered a massive turmoil, has given a clean chit to five police officials, who had earlier been indicted by a special investigation team and jailed for two months on orders of the high court.
The CBI, which submitted the 66-page chargesheet-cum-report in the high court, has named six doctors, five lawyers and two civilians for fabricating evidence to prove that the two women were raped before being killed.
“Rape and murder has not been established and they died by drowning. The evidence was fabricated to prove otherwise,” CBI counsel Anil Bhan said after submitting the document before the division bench of chief justice Barin Ghosh and justice Yaqub Mir.
The deaths of Neelofar, 22, and her sister-in-law Asiya, 17, in Shopian, 50km from Srinagar, ignited violent protests after residents alleged they had been raped and murdered by security forces, a symbol of alienation for many Kashmiris.
The families of the two women and the Majlis-e-Mashawarat, which is spearheading a campaign for justice, rejected the CBI’s findings and called for a Kashmir bandh tomorrow. Separatists have supported the call.
The next big test for the CBI is whether the designated court will take cognisance of the report or not. The date of the next hearing has not been set yet. The CBI had submitted the chargesheet-cum-report to the chief judicial magistrate’s court in Srinagar on December 10, but was prevented from making it public because of a high court gag that was lifted today.
Till late tonight, there was no comment from the government, which had called for the CBI probe, or from chief minister Omar Abdullah, who had to weather a political crisis on the deaths.
The CBI has concluded that Asiya Jan’s hymen was intact and therefore no rape had taken place. “There was nothing suggestive of penetration… through the hymenal opening,” the agency concluded.
The report attributes the cause of Asiya’s death to “asphyxia as a result of ante-mortem drowning” in a stream and that the injuries on her head were “simple in nature, not sufficient to cause death”. In the case of Neelofar, the chargesheet says there were “no ante-mortem injuries” and death was a result of drowning by “asphyxia”.
The investigations corroborate the theory of drowning from “microscopic examination of the material present in the bronchi and brochioles of Neelofar”, which resemble the samples taken from the Rambriara Nallah into which the women purportedly fell.
The bureau has claimed the stream had enough water to cause the women’s death, and not ankle-deep as suggested by protesters.
The CBI has based its findings on the opinion received from experts from AIIMS and the Central Forensic and Scientific Laboratory, Haryana.
The chargesheet names six doctors — Nighat Shaheen, Ghulam Qadir Sofi, Mohammad Maqbool Mir, Bilal Ahmad, Ghulam Mohammad Paul and Nazia — who were involved in the post-mortem and other investigations; five lawyers — Abdul Majeed Mir, Yusuf Bhat, Mushtaq Ahmad, Sheikh Mubarak and Mohammad Altaf, who spearheaded the campaign for justice; and two witnesses — Zahoor Ahmad and Ali Mohammad Sheikh — for fabricating evidence. Zahoor is the brother of Asiya.
All of them have been charged under various sections that carry prison terms between three and 10 years.
The five police officers, including then Shopian police chief Javed Iqbal, who were earlier arrested for “destroying evidence”, have been exonerated.
Before the presentation of the report, the judges sought permission of Shakeel Ahangar, Neelofar’s husband and Asiya’s brother, for allowing a power point presentation by the agency. Shakeel said he did not want another “rape” of his family members. Justice Ghosh then asked the CBI to give a presentation in camera in his chambers. “This is rape of justice,” an enraged Shakeel later told reporters.
Sheikh Mubarak, a lawyer who heads the Shopian Bar and has been named in the chargesheet, said he is ready to face trial. “The water in the stream is only ankle-deep how can any body die by drowning? You can check the record of 30 years, which shows that nobody died by drowning in it over years. This is a clear cover-up,” he said.
It speaks volumes of the credibility of the CBI when I, sitting 2500 Km away doubt the veracity of the CBI report, so it is not surprising that the people of J & K who are affected by the incident should doubt it.
The CBI and subsequent central governments are to blame for this state of affairs.
The CBI has become so infamaous in doctoring its reports to suit the government at the centre that nobody nowadays believe them.
Of course, the peple in J & K too live in such fear of the cross border terrorists that they too doctor all reports to please them.
So where do we stand.
The J & K people do not trust the CBI report and the CBI says the earlier report is fabricated.
Compare this to the FBI.
They work silently, without any fanfare and nab the culprits with all fool-proof evidence so that the culprit cannot escape. So everybody trusts the FBI investigation.
The CBI and all investigating agencies in India have become so politicised that even hard-core criminals cannot be prosecuted for vote bank politics and personal interest.
If any criminal is caught, a telephone call reaches the police station from his political masters to release him.
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