http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/world/asia/15kashmir.html?ref=asia
SRINAGAR, Kashmir Two young Kashmiri women whose deaths ignited violent protests in this disputed province over the summer were not raped or murdered, but drowned in a mountain stream, Indias top investigative agency said Monday, in the latest and perhaps most stunning turn in a deeply contentious case.
The bodies of the two 17-year-old Aasiya Jan and her sister-in-law Nilofar Shakeel, 22 were found in a shallow stream on May 30. The women had told relatives they were going to the familys orchard, but were not seen again alive.
Initially government officials said that the two women had drowned. But many Kashmiris discounted that explanation, given that the stream in which their bodies were found is seldom more than ankle deep, and a doctor involved with a second autopsy said that there was no doubt the women had been raped. The deaths fueled suspicions that Indian soldiers prey upon Kashmiri women, even though Kashmiri police officers are suspected in this case.
A 66-page report on the case by Indias Central Bureau of Investigation was presented in court here on Monday. It said that forensic evidence collected from the womens bodies indicated that they had died accidentally and that there was no evidence that either had been raped.
The new report accuses doctors, lawyers and witnesses of falsifying information given to the police in the initial investigation, raising the troubling possibility that the rape and murder allegations were concocted as part of an elaborate hoax intended to embarrass Indias security forces, whose presence here is often likened to an occupation.
But to many Kashmiris the report points to a still more troubling accusation: a cover-up that reaches to the highest levels of Indian law enforcement. Relatives of the two women denounced the findings, and protesters burned copies of the report in front of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, where the case was being heard. Activists and clerics called for a general strike across the Kashmir Valley on Tuesday.
Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar, the brother and widower of the two dead women, said the report was tantamount to another rape and murder of my sister and wife.
The Jammu and Kashmir High Court was quick to say that the report cannot be taken as the gospel truth.
The Delhi-based Independent Womens Initiative for Justice, which had sent a team to the Kashmir Valley on a fact-finding mission, said in its recent report that no one in recent or living memory has ever drowned in the stream, and that we would need to be more than merely credulous to believe that.
The case is deeply divisive in the volatile Kashmir Valley, which lies at the heart of the rivalry between India and Pakistan. The two have been to war twice over the province, which was divided between them when British India was partitioned in 1947. Many Kashmiris reject the territorial claims of both countries and want independence.
The delicacy of the case was on display in the courtroom here. When officials from the Central Bureau of Investigation began to give a presentation for the judges, the womens relatives shouted accusations of a cover-up. They shouted their suspicion that the women had been abducted while returning home from the family orchard on the outskirts of the town of Shopian and then raped and killed.
The agency filed charges against 13 people, including 6 doctors, 5 local lawyers, an activist and the brother of one of the dead women. The charges included fabricating evidence and intimidating witnesses after the recovery of the two bodies.
Speaking to reporters after his presentation of the evidence in court, Anil Bhan, a lawyer for the Central Bureau of Investigation, said that the bodies of the women were exhumed in the presence of their family members, that a medical inspection showed that Ms. Jan had not been raped, and that the evidence indicated that she was a virgin when she died. He added that experts from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indias elite medical school, had completed the examination.
An autopsy report prepared by local doctors said that the women had been raped before they were killed. But the Central Bureau of Investigation report says the doctors gave false post-mortem reports and sent slides for DNA examination that had been tampered with.
It now seems that whole charade of investigation by multiple agencies, one after the other, was aimed at shielding the culprits rather than bringing them to book, said Mehbooba Mufti, the president of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party. She described as cruel irony the move to file charges against the family, the witnesses, lawyers and those who have wanted justice to be done.
Yusuf Jameel reported from Srinagar, and Lydia Polgreen from New Delhi
