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| Shabir Khan likely to surrender today | | |
Early Times Report
JAMMU, Feb 11: Congress MLA from Rajouri, Shabir Ahmad Khan, who has been booked on the complaint of an anonymous woman doctor in a case of alleged sexual assault on her in his Srinagar Secretariat office on January 28 and is believed to have gone into the hiding, is likely to surrender tomorrow morning.
Sources associated with the investigation believe that the MLA would surrender either before a judicial magistrate or before the Legislative Assembly Speaker Mubarak Gul to remove the taint of being "fugitive" from himself. Sources said that his counsels must have convinced him for surrender well before his bail application comes up for arguments in a bench of Jammu and Kashmir High Court in Srinagar tomorrow.
"His status of being absconding could affect the merits of his petition. If his bail is rejected, it would be hard for him to seek any relief from the Supreme Court which has made it clear in some previous orders that the absconding persons could not claim bail. So, it is clear that he should surrender by tomorrow", said a leading advocate of J&K High Court.
Notwithstanding the opposition's allegation, and a general impression throughout the State, that Khan is hiding under the shelter and protection of the State government, the government advocates are understood to have put up strong objections to his anticipatory bail. During the arguments, they would be stressing the necessity of his 'custodial interrogation'. They could also maintain that his enlargement on bail could facilitate his possible efforts to destroy the evidences and neutralize the witnesses, even the complainant.
Khan has been in a whirlpool of controversy since last year when FIR of causing death of a patient by negligence during diagnosis and surgery of a young patient was filed against his brother in Rajouri. The doctor had performed a surgery on the youth, allegedly with total carelessness and without checking the lateral preparedness of the operation. The youth's cousin, who belongs to a well-connected political family and is an IAS officer and Deputy Commissioner, approached not less than Governor N.N. Vohra in pursuit of "justice".
As the IAS lobby asserted, FIR was filed against the accused doctor.
It is after several years that an MLA has not been able to attend a session of the J&K Legislature. Previously, two of the MLAs, namely Ghulam Ahmad Mir and Raman Matoo, who had even functioned as Ministers of State in Mufti Sayeed's government in 2002-05, were arrested by CBI for their alleged involvement in the infamous Srinagar Sex Scandal in 2006. However, the prosecution failed to establish the charges against him when the witnesses turned hostile inspite of having set the valley on fire with their statements and having got their statements recorded before a Principal District and Sessions Judge.
For reasons not explained till date, CBI has neither gone in appeal to a higher judicial forum nor sought the perjury prosecution against the female witnesses, almost all belonging to Kashmir valley. |
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