Shopian case: 11 get bail

As many as 11 people, including doctors and lawyers, today got bail in the Shopian case as a chief judicial magistrate in Srinagar took cognisance of the CBI chargehseet on drowning of two women who were alleged to have been raped and murdered.

All the accused except Dr Nighat Shaheen and Dr Nazia Hassan were present before chief judicial magistrate Mohammed
Ibrahim Wani and the court asked them to furnish a bail bond of Rs10,000 each.

The accused were represented by president of Kashmir Bar Council Mian Abdul Qayoom who moved an application before the court for inclusion of statements made by some people before the Special Investigating team of the state police.

The CBI counsel was not present in the court when the bail was being granted and therefore, there was no opposition. The next date of hearing has been fixed for April 17.

Life in Shopian town, 51km from Srinagar, had come to a standstill after the bodies of 22-year-old Neelofar and 17-year-old Asiya were found in a stream. Protests were held claiming that the two had been raped and murdered.

The CBI, which has based its finding on the opinion received from experts of AIIMS, Central Forensic and Scientific Laboratory and FSL of Haryana, had told the CJM's court on December 10 that the women were never raped and had The CBI had filed chargesheet against six doctors — Nighat Shaheen, GQ Sofi, Maqbool Mir, GM Paul, Bilal Ahmed Dalal and Nazia Hassan — under Sections 167 (public servant framing an incorrect document) and section 194 (giving or fabricating evidence with intent to procure conviction of capital offence) of the Ranbir Penal Code.

The CBI alleged in its chargesheet that the doctors did not carry out the postmortem properly and gave a false report that the two victims had been raped before being murdered. The medicos were also charged for preparing false vaginal slides.

Five lawyers, including two who have worked as public prosecutors (Mushtaq Ahmed Gattoo and Sheikh Mubarak), were charged with conspiring and intimidating witnesses to make false submissions before a magistrate about women's cries being heard from a police van during the incident.

Besides these two lawyers, others were Abdul Majid Dar, Mohammed Yusuf Bhat and Altaf Ahmed. They all have been charged under Sections 194, 342 (wrongful confinement) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy).

The five lawyers have been charged with entering into a criminal conspiracy with Ali Mohammed Sheikh and Zahoor Ahmed Ahnger in pressurising two — Abdul Rashid and G M Lone — to give false statement under oath before a magistrate that they
had heard women's cries coming from a police vehicle.

The CBI questioned Rashid and Lone who spilt the beans and told the agency sleuths that they had been pressurised by the lawyers through Sheikh and Ahnger. The CBI got their fresh confessional statement registered before a chief judicial
magistrate. A police constable Mohammed Yaseen Ganai has also been chargesheeted for allegedly giving false information and making false charges with an intent to injure. He has already secured bail and his case will come up for hearing on April 19.

CBI findings in the case came as a major embarrassment for the Jammu and Kashmir government and the one-man Jain Commission appointed by it as the probe agency found nothing against four policemen — superintendent of police Javed Iqbal Mattoo, deputy SP Rohit Basgotra, station house officer Shafiq Ahmed and Sub-Inspector Gazi Karim. All the four were not given bail for nearly two months.

The four had spent two months in jail following orders from the high court, which had said it was convinced with the findings of Special Investigating Team constituted by it to probe the incident that they allegedly tried to destroy the evidence.

The CBI took over the investigations in the case on September 17.