Shopian case: CBI files chargesheet against 13 including doctors & lawyers

The CBI informed the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday that a chargesheet had been filed before a Chief Judicial Magistrate against 13 people for allegedly creating false evidence and witnesses.

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.

Widespread protests were held in Shopian district after recovery of two bodies of women -- 22-year-old Neelofar and her 17-year-old sister-in-law Asiya. The protestors were claiming rape and murder of the two women by securitymen.
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 forensic experts had claimed that Aasiya's hymen was intact and they shared their finding with the doctors of Mushawarat Majlis-e-Committee, an amalgam which spearheaded the 47-day agitation over the incident.

According to official sources, the doctor who prepared the vaginal slides of the victims had 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 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.

The two key witnesses -- Abdul Rashid and G M Lone -- have been charged with perjury. The two had retracted from their earlier confessional statements in which they had 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 promised to help set up their business for making these submissions