At the Humhuma Police guesthouse near the Srinagar airport, a team of 13 CBI officials is giving shape to one of the agency’s most complicated and politically-sensitive cases. For it is in a room in the guesthouse, that the 16-year old victim of the sex scandal is presently staying in protective custody with her husband, Irfan, and is being frequently called to identify persons who visited her in the brothel and who include several well-known politicians, traders and police officers.The sex scandal case has been handed over to the CBI at a stage when the stock of the agency is high in the Valley as it came close to its chargesheet against Army officials in the Pathribal fake encounter case. The agency, nonetheless, faces a difficult predicament in the case, given the fact that the High Court is monitoring the case in a manner some in the agency feel veers on interference with an independent probe.The High Court, for instance, initially ruled that the CBI file a daily report on the progress (which the CBI opposed) and later, ruled that even Section 161 statements of key witnesses be recorded in the presence of a sessions judge.The legal cell of the CBI is presently vetting the High Court orders to see whether some sort of review or counter-appeal might be required. But agency officials concede that the latest High Court order after which J-K police teams were told to assist in tracing and presenting suspects for identification parade, have given them a reprieve of sorts.Till weekend, the CBI had prepared a list of some dozen suspects who were paraded before the 16-year-old victim and of them she was able to identify only four. Two suspects were among the six men who had already been put behind bars by the local police prior to the CBI taking charge. The suspects identified by the victim, could face imminent arrest and may be, at a later stage, be slapped with a rape charge.So far, the CBI has arrested two more persons in the case, and both men are linked to filming the MMS clips of the victim. These clips were then converted into CDs—the circulation of which made the sex scandal public.However, there are many minute points of corroboration to be undertaken by the CBI since the mere naming of a suspect by the victim or even a simple identification during the parade does not tantamount to their being implicated in a rape case.For example, the victim has named some locations and restaurants, which the CBI has discovered do not exist. Or, in the case of one high-profile Congress leader, the victim has said that while she was sent to his house, the client was not at home and had to return to the brothel to be scolded by Sabeena. But at several places during her testimony, she has said she will be able to identify the visitors to the brothel or the officers she was taken to meet and the veracity of these claims is what the CBI is hard-pressed to prove.
