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| SHOPIAN FIASCO | | CBI initiates its probe, discusses case with SIT | | AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Sep 17: Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) today began its probe into the alleged rape-cum-murder of two young women in Shopian during the night intervening May 29th and May 30th this year with a five-hour-long briefing with members of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Jammu & Kashmir Police that failed to achieve any breakthrough in three months of turbulent exercise including 26 days of appearance in different judicial courts.
Highly placed official sources told Early Times that a special team of CBI, comprising over a dozen members, reached here at 1330 hours and settled its camp at a Police guesthouse at Humhama. In 2006-07, CBI had operated from the same base to investigate the infamous Srinagar Sex Scandal. This time, however, most of the CBI team members, including a Superintendent of Police, would remained stationed at Shopian while as the overall head, a DIG, would mostly operate from Humhama, close to Srinagar Airport.
Those who arrived in today included one DIG, one SP, three Dy SPs, three Inspectors and nearly a dozen other junior officials. On CBI’s requisition, J&K Police provided four bullet-proof cars, four escort Gypsies and one minibus to the team even as other facilities like computers, facsimile machines, printers, scanners and telephones were following.
Sources revealed that immediately after settling at Humhama, DIG and SP of CBI took a detailed briefing of five long hours with members of the SIT. Even as overall supervisor of the SIT, Farooq Khan, lately appointed as IGP Kashmir, was not present, DIG Rauful Hassan, SP Shah Deen (who worked as SIT’s Chief Investigating Officer), Dy SP Headquarters Budgam Bashir Ahmed Khan and Dy SP Headquarters Kulgam Bashir Ahmed Dar participated in the marathon briefing.
Sources, present in the meeting, told this correspondent that the SIT members explained in detail the circumstances in which they conducted the investigation and “narrowed down on the suspects”. They narrated how Police Station Shopian had learned about mysterious disappearance of the two young women, search and recovery of the dead bodies, circumstances leading to disruption in conducting of post mortem, varying and corroborating statements of witnesses, politicization of the tragedy by separatist as well as mainstream politicians, cooperation and non-cooperation of the family members and relatives of the deceased as well as residents of Shopian, destroying of evidences in Police and doctors’ custody besides appearance of the SIT members for as many as 26 days before different courts.
State government, according to sources, has already allayed varied apprehensions of the CBI that had initially feared hostile atmosphere and non-cooperation of witnesses and family members of the deceased expressed its reservations in taking over the investigation. According to these sources, even the Coordination Committee of Shopian has explicitly conveyed to the CBI through officials of the state government that it would enjoy “total cooperation” from the family members of Neelofar Jan and Asiya Jan as well as other witnesses and common residents of Shopian. It has been pointed out to CBI that Coordination Committee of Shopian had not only snapped its ties with both factions of the separatist Hurriyat Conference but its followers had also shouted slogans against a hardline separatist leader for his refusal to support a call of shutdown against SIT’s failure last week.
Coordination Committee had earlier sponsored nearly 50-day-long total shutdown at the south Kashmir district headquarters and suspended strike on certain assurances from a Division Bench of J&K High Court, comprising Chief Justice Mr Barin Ghosh and Mr Justice Mohammad Yaqoob Mir. On September 15th, Coordination Committee enforced a day-long shutdown in Shopian against SIT’s failure but made it repeatedly clear that the agitation was in no way against Mr Justice Sunil Hali’s granting of bail in favour of four detained Police officials.
While Chairman of so-called moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, JKLF Chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik and others had remained non-committal but lukewarm, Chairman of the radical faction of Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, had declared that the strike would remain restricted to Shopian. His announcement had raised a many eyebrows in the Coordination Committee in Shopian which went public to assert that it would not support any of the Hurriyat programmes in future.
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