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| CBI awaits PC’s return | | |
ABID SHAH
New Delhi, September 11: The Central Bureau of Investigation awaits the arrival of Union Home Minister, Mr P Chidambaram, from the US before moving to probe over three-month-old Shopian rape and murder case of two women that has caused widespread protests in the Kashmir Valley over the ghastly incident.
Though attention has once again gone to the CBI in the wake of bail granted to four personnel of Jammu and Kashmir Police earlier arrested in the wake of allegations of destroying the evidence related to the case, the premier investigating agency has not been too keen to take up the badly entangled case.
After the fiasco in Arushi Talwar murder case in NOIDA where vital medical samples were allegedly tempered frustrating the long drawn CBI investigations in the case, the CBI has been wary of taking up the Shopian case where destruction of evidence and goof up in autopsies of the two victims, Nilofar (22) and Aasiya (17) have already been alleged.
Saying this, reliable Government sources point out that the Shopian case has come to have political stakes. So much so that an activist who was organising protests in the wake of rape and murder of the two Shopian women went missing on September 5. The body of Muhammed Hussain Zargar was found on last Tuesday evening in a desolate orchard of the area.
Since passions run high, the decision to put the CBI on the job that has come to assume a highly sensitive nature would be taken only at the highest level, say the sources.
They point out since Union Minister for Home, Mr P Chidambaram, is on a visit to the United States and is expected to be back only by the weekend, the Jammu and Kashmir Government’s plea made to the Department of Personnel to allow a probe in the case by the CBI is being kept on hold at least for the time being.
Earlier in the wake of State Government’s plea before the High Court in Srinagar to hand over the probe in murder and rape case of Shopian women the CBI spokesman, Mr Harsh Bahal, had expressed investigative agency’s reluctance to take up the case. On August 26 Mr Bahal said in New Delhi that “CBI would need the cooperation of the witnesses, help of general public and help of the relatives of the deceased in the case. In view of this it will be difficult for the CBI to take over investigations. The CBI has conveyed its views to the State Government.”
The Chief Minister Mr Omar Abdullah, however, visited Shopian on last Tuesday and announced that the guilty in the gruesome case would be hanged and the CBI was being asked to move in and probe the case.
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