Srinagar: Curtain is likely to be drawn
over the mystery surrounding the recovery of two bodies of
women in Shopian on Sunday with the CBI set to submit its
report to the Jammu and Kashmir High Court here.
The CBI, which had been given a two-month time by a
division bench of the high court on October 13 to finish the
probe into the alleged rape cum murder case, was expected to
submit the statements of witnesses and the forensic
examination of the bodies of Neelofar (22) and her
sister-in-law Aasiya(17), official sources said today.
The recovery of the two bodies on May 30 had sparked
a widespread agitation in Shopian, 51 kms from here in South
Kashmir, for 47 days. The protestors were claiming that the
two had been raped and later murdered by security personnel.
The CBI is likely to point out the alleged
irregularities by the team of doctors and the role of some of
the lawyers in Shopian in fuelling the turmoil in the
apple-rich district of the state, the sources said.
However, during the exhumation of the two bodies from
the grave by the CBI, a team of doctors from AIIMS had claimed
during post-mortem that one of the victim – Asiya – was never
raped, the sources said.
A CBI team with the help of a special forensic team
comprising doctors from AIIMS and local medicos came to this
conclusion during an on-the-spot examination of the body of
Aasiya, one of the two victims whose body was exhumed on
September 28 at a graveyard in Bonigham in Shopian.
The forensic experts have found that Aasiya's hymen
was intact, the sources said, adding the experts shared their
finding with the doctors of Mushawarat Majlis-e-Committee, an
amalgam which spearheaded the 47-day agitation against the
incident, who were present at the site.
In yet another twist to the case, a doctor who
prepared the vaginal slides of the victims told the CBI that
no samples had ever been taken from the women.
The doctor, who was a part of the second postmortem
team from Pulwama district hospital, was questioned by the CBI
team camping here during which she told the investigators that
no vaginal swab was ever taken of Neelofar and Aasiya, the
sources said, adding, the doctor broke down during the
questioning and narrated the entire sequence of events to the
CBI officials.
They claimed that the doctor had taken samples from
gloves used in the gynaecological ward of the district
hospital and prepared a slide which showed presence of semen.
The CBI conducted searches at the hospital and seized various
pairs of gloves and records from there.
Nazia Hassan, the doctor who was part of the first
medical team had deposed before the Justice Jan Commission
stating that she could not conduct examination of vagina of
the victims because of 'rigor mortis' (stiffness in the body
after death).
The second lady doctor had stunned everyone by
claiming that she had been able to take the vaginal swab and
also prepare the slides for forensic examination.
Another twist in the case came when two key witnesses
-- Abdul Rashid and G M Lone -- retracted from their earlier
confessional statements in which they had earlier claimed
before a magistrate that they had heard cries of women coming
from a police vehicle.
However, after the CBI sleuths tried to make sense out
of their confessional statement, both the witnesses broke down
and claimed that some lawyers had offered them money and
setting up of business in lieu of making such a statement.
They said this statement of Rashid and Lone was
recorded afresh before the Chief Judicial Magistrate.
Following this, the CBI questioned four lawyers,
including public prosecutor Mushtaq Ahamed Gattoo, in
connection with unrest in Shopian town of South Kashmir
following the death of the two women.
The lawyers were summoned by the probe agency for
recording their statements during which all the four,
including Gattoo, were questioned for allegedly influencing
some of the witnesses to make statements before the one-member
Jan Commission and the court in Shopian, the sources claimed.
Shopian township had witnessed a 47-day protest after
Neelofar and Aasiya were found dead near a stream behind an
orchard in the last week of May this year. It was alleged the
two were raped and murdered.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, December 13, 2009, 17:43