By IANS,
New Delhi/Srinagar: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Monday said the deaths of two women in Kashmir’s Shopian district in May were due to drowning and neither of them was raped or murdered.
It also chargesheeted 13 people, including six doctors and five advocates, for preparing false reports and fabricating evidence in the case that triggered a massive furore in the Kashmir Valley.
The probe agency has absolved security and police officials of any wrongdoing.
“The two women died due to drowning and were not raped and murdered as was alleged,” CBI counsel Anil Bhan told reporters in Srinagar.
The CBI submitted a 66-page probe report to the division bench of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, comprising Chief Justice Barin Ghosh and Justice Mohammad Yaqub Mir, which has been monitoring the case. The agency also gave an in-camera power point presentation to the bench in the chamber of the chief justice.
The two women, Nilofar Jan, 22, and her 17-year-old sister-in-law Asiya Jan, were found dead May 30 off a stream in Shopian, leading to a major uprising in the Kashmir Valley this summer amid allegations that the woman had been raped and murdered.
Shopian town, 50 km from Srinagar, observed a 47-day shutdown before the state government announced a one-man inquiry commission.
The CBI exonerated troopers of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), who were accused in the rape and murder of the two women. The central probe agency named six doctors, five advocates and two men in the charge sheet for preparing false reports, fabricating evidence and inducing and threatening the witnesses to make it a case of rape and murder.
The doctors are identified as Bilal Ahmad Dalal and Nighat Shaheen, both assistant surgeons of the district hospital in Pulwama, Ghulam Qadir Sofi, deputy chief medical officer in the same hospital, Maqbool Mir from the department of health in the state government, and Ghulam Mohammad Paul, the then chief medical officer of Pulwama.
The lawyers are Abdul Majid Mir, Mushtaq Ahmad Gatoo, Mohammad Yusuf Bhat, Sheikh Mubarak and Altaf Ahmad. The other two are identified as Ali Mohammad Sheikh and Zahoor Ahmad Ahanger.
“Their intention was to implicate the police and security forces in a false case of rape and murder of the two deceased ladies in order to defame, discredit and cause injury to them. Such false statements were made both before the Jan Commission as well as the chief judicial magistrate of Shopian,” a CBI spokesman said in New Delhi.
The government-appointed commission had alleged that four police officers were involved in destroying some of the key evidence following which they were suspended and arrested. The case was then handed over to the CBI in September.
“On the basis of scientific reports, including polygraph examination and DNA tests, verification of their call detail records and oral as well as documentary evidence collected during the course of investigation, it was proved that the four arrested police officers were not in anyway involved directly or indirectly with the incident,” the official added.
The CBI took up investigation 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.
The drowning theory corroborates the first statement of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on the incident. He later said he had been misled by the Shopian district administration and police.
However, the Majlis Mushawarat Shopian, which has been spear-heading the Shopian agitation, has rejected the CBI’s probe report and called for a Kashmir bandh Tuesday.