Call it a coincidence but around the time Gujarat goes to Lok Sabha polls, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will file its chargesheet in the Bilkis Yakub Rasool case before the 90 day deadline ends on Tuesday.
The first of the post-Godhra riot cases being probed by the CBI — the plight of Bilkis, gangraped when she was five months pregnant while 14 of her relatives were killed, was highlighted by The Indian Express — the case chargesheet is expected to be a severe indictment of the Gujarat police and the state administration.
The Gujarat police shut the Bilkis case file and the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to probe afresh.
The CBI chargesheet will be filed in a Dahod court. The agency has time only till Tuesday. Once the deadline runs out, jailed suspects will be eligible for bail.
CBI officials say majority of the 14 persons under arrest, including two police officials, will be listed as accused in the case. The CBI recently recovered one of the two Jeeps, carrying the suspects at the time of the incident.
The CBI is also likely to recommend departmental action against a clutch of other government officials and doctors whose negligence came to light when the CBI investigated the March 2002 massacre.
As the CBI moves, forensic experts of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are trying to match DNA samples isolated from the exhumed bones of Bilkis’s relatives with DNA samples of her surviving relatives. While this scientific evidence is still to come in, the agency will list in its chargesheet other evidences:
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• The testimony of Bilkis and medical evidence to prove that she was raped by some of the accused persons
• The testimony of panch witnesses who told the CBI how 60 kg of salt was sprinkled on the bodies dumped in a mass grave on the orders of the Gujarat police
• Other scientific evidence collected by a Central Forensic Science Laboratory team which accompanied experts from AIIMS to Dahod
• Two sets of photographs of bodies, taken by local photographers and recovered by the CBI later. In the second set, the photograph of the body of Bilkis’s daughter was missing
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• The testimony of a group from Dahod, taken to Mumbai for giving evidence on the communal situation when the carnage took place.
