Chandigarh: A special CBI court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing in the infamous 2006 Jammu and Kashmir
sex scandal till April four.
The day-long in-camera proceedings in the case took
place in the court of CBI special Judge Reetu Tagore and media
was kept out of bounds.
Counsels for the prosecution and defence told media
outside the court that two witnesses, both females, turned
hostile in the case. With this, four witnesses in the case
have turned hostile.
The court fixed April 4 and 5 for further hearing in
the case.
"Two witnesses did not support the prosecution version
in the court," a CBI counsel said.
Both the witnesses told the court that they do not
know the alleged kingpin Sabeena, a defence counsel said.
"The witnesses told the court that they were not
sexually exploited by the alleged accused," he said.
While one of the witness was a Special Police Officer
(SPO) in Jammu and Kashmir, the other witness is a housewife.
Both the females are in their twenties.
Earlier in January this year, two witnesses in the
case turned hostile and gave a clean chit to the accused.
The Jammu and Kashmir sex scandal rocked the Kashmir
Valley in which nine cases for various offences, including
Section 376 (rape) of Ranbir Penal Code (RPC), Immoral
Trafficking Act and the Information Technology Act were
registered.
Nine accused were named in one case, while three each
were named in the remaining eight cases. The names of Sabina
and her husband Abdul Hamid Billa figure in all the cases.
The other accused include former Jammu and Kashmir
minister Raman Mattoo, former DSP Mohammad Ashraf Mir,
bureaucrat Iqbal Khandey, former DSP Mohammad Yusuf Mir and
former Additional Advocate General Anil Sethi.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, February 16, 2011, 21:40