Shopian case: Letter pointing to kin's role penned by constable

The CBI report in the Shopian case has opened a can of worms, as it has said that a Jammu & Kashmir police constable had written an anonymous letter alleging involvement of a member of the victims' family in the death of the two girls with an intention to divert the probe.

The CBI, which submitted its report before the Jammu & Kashmir high court yesterday, alleged that handwriting analysis of the letter, supposedly written by a classmate of one of the victim Aasiya Jan (17), has shown it was actually written by a constable named Mohd Yaseen Ganie.

This finding prompted CBI to file a separate complaint against the police official.

"The handwriting expert of the Forensic Science Laboratory, Srinagar, has attributed the authorship of this letter to constable Mohd Yaseen Ganie No.538/SPN, who had written the said letter to mislead / divert the investigation from its logical conclusion," CBI alleged in its report.

The letter was received at a local police station after the protests, that erupted in the hilly town after bodies of Aasiya and her sister-in-law, Neelofer Jan (22), were fished out of a river stream, had ended.

It claimed the writer was a male classmate of Aasiya, and alleged she might have been murdered by her own family member.

The letter claimed the two were on friendly terms and this was not liked by her brother Shakeel Ahmed Ahanghar.