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| Bodies of Shopian victims exhumed | | Both women’s tissues, genital organs taken for thorough examination | | Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
SRINAGAR, Sep 28: CBI’s sensitive operation of the exhumation of the dead bodies of 25-year-old Neelofar Jan and 17-year-old Aasiya Jan was conducted smoothly by a team of doctors and forensic science experts today four months after the young women had been found dead in mysterious circumstances and buried in a surcharged atmosphere on May 30th at Shopian in South Kashmir. The post mortem team obtained necessary samples, including body tissues and genital organs of both the women, who were widely believed to have been raped and murdered even as a commission of inquiry, comprising a retired judge of J&K High Court as well as a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of J&K Police have failed to get a breakthrough with regard to identification of the culprits in the last four months.
Authoritative sources told Early Times that nearly a 30-member team of CBI officials, doctors from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) New Delhi arrived in Shopian early in the morning and started the process of exhumation of the two dead bodies at 0630 hours. With an interval of one hour, the operation was completed in eight hours.
Residents of Shopian, represented by Majlis-e-Mushawarat Shopian (MMS), extended complete cooperation to the CBI team and enforced day-long shutdown to ensure that there was no disruption due to thick gathering of crowds. On an advice from MMS, District Magistrate had already imposed section 144 Cr PC to restrict and regulate common civilian movement. Senior officials from Police and civil administration and three duty magistrates, including two lady officers, remained present on the graveyard to supervise the operation that was fully recorded on camera by the CBI officials. Neelofar’s husband and Aasiya’s brother, Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar, as well as the former’s father, Pir Abdul Hai, also watched the exercise from beginning to the end.
Sources said that the post mortem team got the graves identified with the help of the relatives of the two victims and those who had participated in their funeral in presence of the designated magistrates and thereafter Aasiya’s tomb was opened to recover her body. Neelofar’s body was similarly acquired in part two of the operation in the afternoon.
Deputy Commissioner of Shopian, Abdul Majeed Khanday, said that CBI also associated one of the local doctors, namely Dr Ghulam Qadir Khan, with the exhumation process on the request from MMS. He too was present on the occasion for the full day until both the bodies were re-buried with observance of Islamic funeral rituals at 1600 hours. MMS spokesman, Mohammad Shafi Khan, representative Dr Ghulam Qadir Khan as well as Neelofar’s husband and Aasiya’s brother, Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar, expressed complete satisfaction over the exhumation and post mortem process and told mediapersons that everything had passed on smoothly.
Authorities had installed massive canopies and created razor-wire barriers around the site of exhumation that remained out-of-bounds for all others including a large number of mediapersons and camera crews of over a dozen television news channels.
Sources associated with the operation told Early Times that inspite of remaining buried for four months, both the bodies were found with little putrefaction and all the tissues and other samples were secured by the team of experts smoothly. The team also collected vaginal parts of both the bodies in full to find whether the deceased women had been sexually assaulted before their death occurred during the night intervening May 29th and 30th. Even as the perfunctory examination of unmarried Aasiya’s hymen, according to sources, did not conclusively establish a sexual assault, members of the expert team preserved the same carefully for a subsequent microscopic analysis that would lead to the final opinion.
DC Shopian said that the post mortem team, selected and arranged by CBI without any local involvement, collected all the required samples and carried them back to its Srinagar camp. He said that the sample consignment, sealed and signed in presence of the duty magistrates and doctors would be carried to New Delhi where it would be subjected to further examination and detailed scientific analysis.
CBI is conducting the medico-legal exercise afresh in view of a chain of recent developments from exposure of alien vaginal smear to Dr Nighat Shaheen’s startling disclosure of the swab having been clandestinely collected from the surgical gloves used on 20-odd female patients at District Hospital of Pulwama. Incommunicado for media, Dr Shaheen is now reportedly under sustained questioning as the CBI team is digging whether she had conducted the incriminating practice with the objective of establishing an act of gang rape or for any other purpose or constraint. Two male doctors of her team, who were members of the second post mortem on May 30th, are also being interrogated to learn whether or not they were associated with the gynecologist’s plot.
Sources said CBI was also trying to know about the people who met or remained in communication with the three doctors during the month of June and why the doctors had suddenly changed SIM cards of their mobile phones. CBI, according to these sources, is also investigating whether the fake vaginal swabs had been sent to FSL Srinagar and CFSL New Delhi with the motive of protecting or framing any particular characters or for any other purpose or constraint. It was on the basis of these swabs that FSL Srinagar had confirmed sexual assault on the two women but the same samples were later found to be of different characters at CFSL New Delhi.
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