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Journalism of Courage
The Shopian investigation into the deaths of two defenceless women as they walked back home from a nearby orchard continues to shock. The bodies of Neelofar and her sister-in-law Asiya were discovered on May 29. Trouble began with the initial cover-up/ incompetence: the refusal to register an FIR,a botched post-mortem report,and forensic results that took for ever to be publicised. The case was made to proceed only on the momentum acquired by protests and public outcry throughout the Kashmir valley. Faced with a bellicose judiciary,a chastened administration brought its own act together. It was announced that rape and murder of the two dead women had been confirmed,officials were suspended and then arrested,and a special investigation team was placed on the job,their every move monitored by the Jammu and Kashmir high court.
If all this meant that the investigations would now be clean,then that meaning has been lost on the investigators. The high court had ordered the SIT to submit forensic results of the vaginal swabs of the two victims,and compare sperm traces on them with the DNA of the four arrested officers. But this is the suspicion that has now come to light: the swabs that the SIT team sent to the CBIs central forensic laboratory are not of the victims,according to the laboratory. If this finding is proven to be accurate,it means that the SIT team has sent the wrong sample for testing. How big is the cover up? How far is the reach of the wrong-doers? These are serious questions,questions that the latest botch-up has only highlighted. Even if this mix-up is not deliberate,it would still indicate incompetence of the most damaging order. If a court-monitored special team,appointed after the outcry over the initial cover-up,cannot even be trusted to deliver evidence for analysis,then who can?
CBI must know that this investigation will be conducted under an unwavering public gaze.
