By Agence India Press
Srinagar: The CBI has filed a charge-sheet against 13 people including six doctors and lawyers for allegedly “fabricating” evidence in the aftermath of recovery of two bodies of women Nelofer and Asiya in Shopian in May this year.
The CBI informed the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday that a charge-sheet had been filed before a Chief Judicial Magistrate against 13 people for allegedly creating false evidence and witnesses.
Investigation (CBI) on Monday submitted its 66-page probe report into the alleged rape and murder of two women in south Kashmir Shopian district which triggered a massive furore in the Kashmir Valley few months back.
The report was filed before the Jammu and Kashmir High Court that was yet to decide whether to examine it in an open court or in-camera given the sensitivity of the case.
Nilofar Jan, 22, and her 17-year-old sister-in-law Asiya Jan, were found dead on May 30 off a stream in Shopian, triggering a major uprising in the Kashmir Valley this summer amid allegations that the woman had been raped and murdered.
Shopian town, which is about 50 km from here, observed a 47-day shutdown before the state government announced a one-man inquiry commission.
An autopsy report had confirmed that the women were raped and the government appointed commission alleged that four police officers were involved in destroying some of the key evidence following which they were suspended and arrested before handing over the case to CBI in September.
The court had directed the CBI not to share its investigation with the media. However, some newspapers in Srinagar, indicating that the report was apparently leaked to them, reported that the central probe team has concluded that the women died of drowning and there was no foul play in the deaths.
CBI did not find anything to suggest that four police officials including the then Superintendent of Police Javed Iqbal Mattoo, Deputy Superintendent of Police Rohit Basgotra, SHO Shafiq Ahmed and Sub Inspector Gazi Karim were involved in the crime.
The CBI had been given a two-month time by a division bench of the high court on October 13 to finish the probe into the case.
The CBI has said that the doctors have not properly conducted the postmortem and even the viscera samples were not taken.
The rape theory of the doctors was blown to pieces after the exhumation of the two bodies from the grave by the CBI and team of doctors from AIIMS, who had claimed during post-mortem that one of the victim Asiya was a virgin, they said.
The Delhi-based Independent Women’s Initiative for Justice (IWIJ), which had sent its team to the valley on a fact finding mission, in its report released on Thursday alleged that the Jammu and Kashmir government was involved in a major hush-up of the case.
The IWIJ report argues that as for “accidental drowning of the two women in the stream, where no one in recent or living memory has ever drowned, we would need to be more than merely credulous to believe that”.
The IWIJ said that during its team’s visit to Shopian in August this year it found that the water in the stream was only ankle-deep not enough for anybody to drown in it.
Majlis-e-Mushawarat of Shopian who was following the case from the day one condemned the report and called for complete shutdown on December 15.
A division bench of the high court, comprising Chief Justice Barin Ghosh and Justice Mohammed Yaqoob Mir, is expected to take up the case.