Rajan Gandhi
Whole Jammu and Kashmir remained glued to TV News and social media for the whole day, waiting for the outcome of SC hearing on Rasana, Kathua, murder case and SC shifted the case to Pathankot , trial will be held on daily basis without any adjournment. Time being no direction for CBI inquiry has been given and the issue for same will be heard on 9th July. Time and again it has been proven that culprits cannot escape whatever circumstances may be. It will be interesting to go in the case history of similar nature of Shopian case where two women aged 23 and her sister-in-law aged 17 were found in Rambiara stream which right from the word go was termed as rape and murder by vested interests. Judicial Commission headed by Justice (retired) Jan, assisted by Dr. Haseeb Mughal, emphatically established that the two ladies were raped before being murdered. The only difference was that Justice Jan and Dr Mughal could not conclude who were involved in the crime. Similarly the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by (then) state police chief Kuldeep Khuda and monitored by then Chief Justice Barin Gosh along with Justice Mohammad Yaqoob Mir, also established the rape and murder theory. The state agencies were unanimous in describing the death of the two hapless girls as “rape and murder”, however they failed in identifying the perpetrators of the crime. SP Javed Matto, DSP Rohit Basotra, Inspector Shafiq Ahmad (then SHO Shopian), SI Gazi Abdul Karim and the Legal Cell Head, FSL, Javaid Iqbal Hafiz were arrested at the recommendations of the Justice Jan Commission for destroying evidence. But since perpetrators of crime were still elusive so ultimately state government ordered CBI investigation which brought its own team of doctors from Delhi for exhumation of Asiya and Nelofar’s bodies and with the assistance of CFSL and AIIMS ultimately concluded that no rape was committed, the women drowned in the stream while crossing it. The CBI charged Chief Medical Officer Ghulam Qadir Sofi and five other doctors with involvement in “fudging and fabricating evidences and preparing a false post mortem report” in the alleged rape and murder of two young women in Shopian. All those who cynically cashed in on the deaths to further their agenda should have also been held accountable but thankfully ultimately truth prevailed.
Another mystery case of our state worth special mention is of NC worker Syed Mohammed Yusuf Shah who was summoned by then CM Omar Abdullah to ascertain whether Yusuf Shah had taken money from people on the pretext of getting them ministerial berths. After interrogation by CM himself IG Crime was called up and Yusuf was arrested along with two others, Salam Reshi and Mohammed Yusuf Bhat, on September 28 from the Chief Minister’s. Yusuf died the following day and as per postmortem reports he had suffered a massive cardio-respiratory failure. After much hue and cry by opposition one man Commission under retired judge H S Bedi, whose name was proposed by the Union Law Ministry , was appointed and as usual mystery remains who did what in the whole case. Another famous case involving Abdullah family is of an alleged embezzlement of over Rs 113 crore of funds of Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association, which was headed by Farooq Abdullah at the time. The alleged scam surfaced in 2012, State Police/ CB took over the case and as usual till 2015 no headway was achieved and ultimately case was handed over to CBI by the bench of state HC comprising the then Chief Justice N Paul Vasanthakumar and Justice Bansi Lal Bhat on September 3rd, 2015. Case is still pending and CBI is supposed to file charge sheet any time now as the court has directed for the same recently. Same is the story of ETT scam or any other scam which gathers dust year after year with no outcome and the case dies its own death with the passage of time. Interestingly web site of Crime Branch provides no details or updates of pending cases / FIRs though there is a link namely FIR Cases Status under Citizen Services head and the reasons for non availability of information are not hard to guess. Transparency is the principle of justice which is missing prominently.
On the other hand it has not been an easy task for CBI to crack such cases as they are also over burdened with pending cases. As per the information shared in the Parliament in June 2017 ,there are a total of 1,369 cases under investigation, 175 of them for more than two years, highest 800 are pending for less than a year and 394 for between one to two years. A total of 791 cases were referred to the CBI during 2014 and June 30, 2017. Of these, 207 were handed over to CBI in 2014, 326 in 2015, 151 in 2016 and 107 between January and June 2017. Though the list of pending cases is long yet CBI has recently successfully cracked the cases of Ryan International School in which a seven-year-old Class 2 student, Pradyuman Thakur, had his throat slit in the washroom and Shimla rape and murder case. In Ryan International School Case , CBI rounded up the accused , a class 11th student who murdered Pradyuman to get exams postponed and PTM delayed. But what the Haryana Police did – hurriedly arrested the bus conductor, Ashok Kumar, for the child’s murder, in a way echoing what the Noida Police did in 2008 in the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case – but most astonishing part was how they claimed that they managed a “confession” from the conductor. In addition, they also claimed that conductor had tried to sexually abuse Pradyuman and killed him when the boy resisted. CBI has finally cracked the sensational case of Himachal Pardesh also after almost nine months of investigations. During the postmortem, the experts tested the discharge in the girl’s vagina and found the presence of semen in it. However, since the semen could not be separated from the vaginal discharge, the Y chromosome or the male chromosome was extracted from it to make the DNA profile of the rapist. Once the chromosome was extracted and analyzed using a procedure called Y-STR, the DNA in it was amplified and a profile was made. Once the DNA profile was ready, the next challenge was to identify the suspect. For the process, the CBI recorded statements of over 400 people and quizzed 2,000 others and finally made a list of 250 suspects, who were regular in the plantation area where the girl’s body was found. The blood samples of those 250 persons were then collected and matched with the DNA of the rapist, but that didn’t lead anywhere. Lineage testing and Y-STR analysis of the DNA was then conducted to identify the clan, race and age of the rapist. Once the test was conducted, the investigators zeroed in on a family from Kangra. The investigation led the CBI to Anil Kumar, a 25-year-old woodcutter from the area, who was earlier arrested in a case of attempt to murder. Following his arrest, his DNA sample was matched with the profile of the rapist and it matched perfectly and the culprit finally landed in the CBI net.
Keeping in view the Shimla rape and murder case or earlier Shopian case CBI has successfully cracked blind , complicated cases and in both the cases police had botched up the cases and some of them were taken into custody , even an IGP rank officer in Shimla case. Time and again police forces of different states had held innocents as culprits which has shaken the trust of public on the police force.
With the case now shifted outside Jammu and Kashmir all eyes and focus will be on the day to day trial at Pathankot. SC will be closing for summer break by this month end and application for shifting the case to CBI will be taken accordingly after the break. It may be a high profile case for all in J & K but for SC it is a routine case like many other and as such no special out of the turn decision has been granted. But the million dollar hypothetical question is will the real truth come out in public domain keeping in view the sensitivity at the level of regions’ social as well as political divide on the issue? Will the case be solved in the remaining tenure of the existing alliance or linger on from session court to HC to CBI or like JKCA scam linger on due to political compulsions? With the regional lines drawn on the issue, the simmering discontent of Jammu public will be an issue to be monitored interestingly by all political parties especially BJP who has very high stakes in this region. Let’s wait and watch how the things unroll but the culprits of the daughter of soil should be taken to task as early as possible.
“We are for truth, no matter who tells it, for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.”
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