[Reader-list] Shopian: Rumors and leaks

[Wali Arifi]

http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=4168&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=22&valid=true

Shopian: Rumors and leaks - Part 1

 *The Majlis-e-Mashawarat (MM), fear that the information leaks to PTI “at
selective intervals” in the course of the CBI investigation are aimed at
advancing “a suitable truth” about the case.* PARVAIZ BUKHARI traces the way
the media has been used to obfuscate the truth since the beginning of the
case.

Posted Sunday, Oct 25 00:32:03, 2009

 After the exhumation of the victims' bodies on Sept 28, the people of
Shopian are eagerly awaiting findings of a continuing probe by a Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team to know what may have happened to
sisters-in-law, Asiya and Neelofar, allegedly raped and murdered by men in
uniform on May 29. Media reports about the case allow us to understand how
rumors and leaks to press have become tools in the state armory to paint the
massive protests around the incident and its stormy political aftermath as
ill-founded.

Majlis-e-Mashawarat (MM), a residents' consultative committee of 300 odd
members drawn from across the district spearheading a campaign for justice
to the victims' families, is also slowly piecing together the way rumors and
leaks continue to be used as the CBI is carrying out its probe.

In a statement issued on Oct 16, the MM accused the CBI of following a path
of cover-ups similar to that of the Special Investigating Team (SIT) of
state police and the one-man judicial probe, the Justice (Rtd) Jan
Commission. Both the probes failed to identify the culprits and were widely
seen across Kashmir as obfuscating the case rather than aiming to establish
the truth.

Commenting on periodic information leaks, particularly to the state run
Press Trust of India (PTI), the MM said: “It was felt that these selective
leakages at selective intervals have obviously a design to create
confusion.” The statement further accused the CBI of continuing a “hush up
in a systematic manner”. “It appears that the CBI team is also trying to
finally conclude the left-over job of such agencies (SIT and judicial
probe),” the MM statement said. The residents' consultative committee
clearly expressed apprehensions that the information leaks to PTI “at
selective intervals” in the course of investigation are aimed at advancing
“a suitable truth” about the case. Most of the PTI reportage about the
Shopian case was picked up by local English dailies in Kashmir including the
well known Greater Kashmir and The Rising Kashmir.

*CBI Preparing the ground: *

Members of the MM, a widely respected body in Kashmir, say the CBI is trying
to ''desensitize the public'' through them, in order to prepare the people
to accept its final conclusions without questioning. By appearing to share
information first hand with the MM, they fear that the CBI will reinforce
whatever pre-determined conclusions they want to give as their findings, and
use the MM's credibility to back that.

As soon as the CBI formally started its probe in the Shopian case, the first
thing it did was to secure a confession from Dr Nighat Chiloo (who conducted
the second post-mortem examination on the victims' bodies on May 30) that
the slides sent for forensic examination were not collected from the victims
but from used gloves in the Pulwama hospital later.

*“In a new twist to the alleged rape and murder of two women in Shopian, a
doctor who prepared the vaginal slides of the victims has told the CBI that
no samples from the duo had ever been taken,”* a PTI report said on Sept 27,
2009. It further added: *“The doctor broke down during the questioning and
narrated the entire sequence of events to the CBI officials, the sources
said. The sources claimed that the doctor had taken samples from gloves used
in the gynaecological ward of the district hospital and prepared a slide
which showed presence of semen.”*

The post-mortem examinations were conducted in the adjacent district
hospital of Shopian, the district where the crime had occurred. Dr Nighat
was made to repeat her confession in front of the MM senior members before
the information was leaked out to PTI. “Is it characterlessness or some kind
of terrible pressure on her (Dr Nighat),” asked Mohammd Shafi Khan,
spokesman of the MM.

 The confession was ostensibly secured to take care of the report sent from
CBI forensic laboratory in New Delhi to SIT that had said that the vaginal
swabs sent to it for examination did not belong to the victims themselves.

It was first reported in *The Hindu* on Aug 11 by Praveen Swami, who often
reports on Kashmir and is well known for his deep access in the state
intelligence establishment.

*“Experts at the Central Bureau of Investigation-managed Central Forensic
Sciences Laboratory (CFSL) have determined that the DNA profile of tissue
cells present in the slides sent by the Jammu and Kashmir police do not
match with the samples from the victims' blood and viscera. Put simply, the
slides supposed to have been prepared from vaginal swabs of the victims were
drawn from other women,”* reported Swami.

The report was followed by PTI the same day it appeared in The Hindu. *“While
there was no official word from either the Central Forensic Sciences
Laboratory, Delhi or Jammu and Kashmir Government, official sources said
today the two slides of vaginal swab sent by the Special Investigating Team
to the CFSL do not match with that of the two victims -- Neelofar and
Aasiya…The CFSL made attempts to compare the vaginal swabs with that of the
viscera and blood samples of the two victims but it did not match, sources
said, prompting the CFSL officials to conclude that the slides said to be
prepared from vaginal swab of the victims were actually drawn from some
other women,” *reported PTI of Aug 11.

These reports prepared the ground for CBI to follow a predetermined track in
the investigation once exhumations were conducted on Sept 28 in presence of
family members and some members of MM that included a doctor invited by them
as a special observer. Notably, the CBI team had postponed the exhumation by
a day. Dr Nighat's “confession” was leaked to PTI on the day the exhumation
was earlier planned.

*Exhumation used to substantiate leaks:*

As soon as Asiya's body was taken out from her grave, rumors soon spread
like a wildfire that her body was fresh and all the biological evidence on
her body has survived four months underground. Members of the MM say that
the body had actually decomposed as expected and the rumors were calibrated
to give credence to the idea that CBI will be able to nail the truth and
also that the victims were martyrs to the “Islamic cause” in Kashmir.

It is a strongly held belief in Muslim societies that a martyr's body does
not decompose as fast after burial as that of others. The people in Shopian,
particularly members of the MM believe the rumor was aimed to invoke the
institution of martyrdom in Islamic faith to appease the public. The intent,
they say, was to create an environment in which whatever CBI said in its
conclusions later would be believed as the established truth by everybody in
Muslim majority Kashmir.

Numerous residents in the town spoke of the rumor having been later traced
to a ruling National Conference (NC) worker in the town at whose residence
the CBI team had lunch on the day of the exhumations.

*Feeding the perception of a predetermined CBI conclusion: *

Just as Asiya's body was laid on the table inside the tent when the re-post
mortem examination was to begin a lady doctor, who was part of the CBI led
forensic team from New Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences
(AIIMS), immediately told the MM members present that the victim's hymen was
intact. “Oopar wale ka shukur hai ki aap ki aur humari izzat bach gayi, rape
nahin hua hai (Thank God yours as well as our honor is saved, no rape has
happened on her (Asiya),” the lady doctor said loudly according to a member
of the MM who was present. This information also found its way to a PTI
report that very day without attribution to any specific CBI official.

PTI reported on Sep 28, the day of exhumations: *“In the latest in the
series of twists and turns in the alleged Shopian rape and murder case, a
forensic probe has found that one of the two young victims was a virgin in
evidence suggesting the girl may not have been raped…The forensic experts
have found that Aasiya's hymen was intact, official sources said. The
forensic experts shared their finding with the doctors of Mushawarat
Majlis-e-Committee, an amalgam which spearheaded the 47-day agitation
against the alleged rape and murder of the duo by suspected security
personnel, who were present at the site, the sources said.”*

Officially, the CBI later continued to maintain that the required tests on
the samples collected from the exhumed bodies had not been done so far. How
were the special team members of the agency, including DIG Satish Golcha
that met the MM three times since the exhumation revealing conclusions to
them?

“They have told us clearly that rape was not committed on Asiya and that
they are now trying to find out if it is a case of murder in the first
place,” said Mohammd Shafi Khan, spokesman of the MM. “How did they reach
this conclusion,” he asks.

*Perusing the drowning theory: *

A report from New Delhi in the Indian Express attributed to CBI sources has
already indicated the victims died due to drowning.

The Indian Express reported on Oct 09: *“Tests conducted on the exhumed
bodies of two Shopian women whose deaths sparked off protests across the
Valley amid allegations that they were raped and murdered are said to be
indicative of “death by drowning”. Forensic experts are learnt to have
verbally conveyed their findings to the CBI which is now probing the case…
Though the first autopsy report had suggested rape and murder, forensic
experts, going by investigations following the exhumation, were veering
around to the theory that the cause of death may have been different from
what was being said earlier.” *

(
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Forensic-tests-on-Shopian-bodies-point-to-drowning-theory/526972/
)

Swami of The Hindu had already indicated on July 14 that the victims died
due to drowning, pointing out that the drowning theory was being worked upon
from much earlier.

*“Shaukat Dalal, who participated in the search for the two women, claimed
that the body of one victim lay naked in the stream. Her wrists, he said,
had been tied with a rope; there was froth emanating from her nose, a sign
of drowning. Doctors who examined the body, however, found no rope-mark
injuries or froth, and recorded that both victims were properly
clothed,” *Swami's
report said.

This report also appears to be an early leak aimed at misdirecting
investigation in the case as Dalal denied having mentioned “froth” coming
out of Neelofar's nose when he saw the body. “I had said in Kashmiri
(Kashmiri language) that there was some ‘Khin' (which in Kashmiri means
nasal mucus, a common occurrence in cold weather) coming out of the nose,”
he told this reporter. A CBI inspector Dalal identified as Vishal questioned
him on Oct 5 and Oct 10 about presence of froth coming out of Neelofar's
nose when he saw her dead body early morning on May 30. “He (Vishal) asked
me if I knew what ‘Khin' is called in English. I said I don't know,” said
Dalal. It is clear that ‘Khin' was translated as “froth” in order to be used
as an indicator of death by drowning.

Even before the Indian Express report appeared on Oct 9, rumors easily
traced to the new Superintendent of Police Shahid Mehraj have been rife in
Shopian that the tissues on which a float test was conducted by the first
team of doctors were not from the lungs of the victims but their hearts. “He
(the SP) told me over phone that the jars that had been marked by the first
team of doctors to contain samples of lungs actually turned out to be heart
tissues,” said a local resident who wished anonymity and was not aware of
the Indian Express report of Oct 09. “They are working to establish drowning
as the cause of death.” The float tests by the first team of doctors had
ruled out drowning as a cause of death.

The new rumors are also scientific in nature. The educated youth in Shopian
say that ‘friends' in police tell them that CBI has found “diatoms” in the
bone marrow of victims which, some doctors say, could be used to forward
drowning as the cause of death. “But nobody is prepared to accept that,”
Khan said. “CBI is trying to ignore the abduction of the two victims by men
in uniform as stated by two witnesses whose statements have been recorded in
terms of Sec 164 CrPC by the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate -  Shopian,”
the latest MM statement added.

The two eyewitnesses, Abdul Rashid Pampori and Ghulam Mohi-ud-Din Lone, have
deposed in the court of CJM Shopian that on May 29, around the time the
incident is believed to have taken place, they had seen a blue colored
police vehicle on the Rambi Ara Bridge inside which some women were
screaming for help. Though both these eyewitnesses say they repeated their
statements three times to the CBI investigators, the same never found its
way in the media leaks.

On the contrary, efforts were made early on to discredit these eyewitnesses
on flimsy grounds. Swami reported in The Hindu on July 14: *“Part of the
reason the Commission made so little progress towards identifying the truth
was the absence of credible witnesses.*

*Shopkeeper Ghulam Mohiuddin Lone claimed to have heard women's voices
crying for help from inside a police truck parked on the bridge across the
Rambiara river, a little after 8 p.m. on May 29. Police personnel on the
bridge, Mr. Lone said, first beat him up, and then threatened to kill him if
he spoke about the incident.*

*Radio repairman Abdul Rashid, who was with Mr. Lone, also claimed to have
heard women crying for help. Like Mr. Lone, Mr. Rashid said police officers
shooed him away as he approached the truck.*

*But Mr. Rashid's testimony differed from Mr. Lone's account on several
counts. For example, he denied having been beaten up or threatened by the
police.”

*



*Lost credibility:*

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court that is monitoring the case has barred the
CBI from sharing any information with media regarding its investigation of
Shopian case. Yet, the agency appeared keen to share information/conclusions
with the MM. Where is the information about what the CBI forensic team has
found so far coming from?

Kashmir High Court Bar Association that filed the original litigation in the
state High Court withdrew from the case expressing total lack of faith in
the CBI probe following the select leaks to the state run news agency, the
PTI.

A member of the MM said the CBI officials told him that they will “certainly
find out how exactly the victims died and who is responsible” but will have
to keep political considerations in mind while officially announcing its
conclusions. “During our informal meetings they (CBI officials) told us that
they will have to keep as reference what the CM of the state and central
officials have said about the case,” said the a member of the MM pleading
anonymity.

Another factor indicating already existing knowledge of what the CBI will
establish as the cause of death is rumors of timing the CBI will choose to
announce its findings in the case. Locals say that the district police
officials have been making enquiries about when the harvest season in the
apple rich district reaches its peak. “They intend to announce the CBI
investigation conclusions at a time when nobody in the area has time for
anything except plucking and parceling their apple produce,” said an apple
trader who has received several phone calls from the district police
authorities asking when the harvest reaches its peak time. Most of the
district's residents are involved in apple growing and its trade. The High
Court has directed the CBI special team to conclude its investigation by Dec
14 when the case is scheduled for next hearing.


To be contd.
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   Shopian: Rumors and leaks - Part II

 *A close examination of the contents of the letter…clearly indicates that
it was written with an intention of misdirecting the investigation, with PTI
playing along, * says PARVAIZ BUKHARI.

Posted Monday, Oct 26 16:59:52, 2009

  Shopian continues to seethe in anger five months after the twin rape and
murder in the town, alleged by men in uniform. The incident triggered such
fierce mass protests here that government forces have been staying indoors
to avoid confrontation. These days it is hard to find a man in uniform on
the streets in this south Kashmir town, an otherwise ubiquitous sight in
embattled Kashmir where the first thing that hits a visitor's eye anywhere
is the heightened presence of police, CRPF and army men donning automatic AK
rifles and bullet-proof gear.



The Majlis-e-Mashawarat (MM), a consultative committee of residents
spearheading a campaign for justice for the victims' families, commands
absolute respect in the area. The MM initially reposed faith in the CBI and
facilitated exhumation of the victims' bodies for a fresh forensic probe.
That faith is already lost as the MM has begun to see the CBI going the same
route - feeding the rumor mill and ‘selective leaks' to press like the
earlier failed investigations by the state police and a government appointed
one-man judicial probe.



*Cover-ups from the beginning: *



The whole saga of cover-ups, obfuscation and the rumor mill started off as
soon as the bodies of the victims were found early morning on May 30 a
kilometer apart from each other along the Ranbi Ara stream. They were
reported missing by their family a few hours earlier the previous night from
their orchard across the shallow stream, some two kilometers from their
residence in Shopian town.



Even before any investigation started and doctors were called to examine the
bodies, the district police authorities, notably the Superintendent of
Police Javed Mattoo, told the family, locals and the media • including this
reporter - that the victims appear to have died due to drowning. The police
officials maintained their drowning theory even as doctors ruled it out
after a float test was done.



“Superintendent of Police Shopian when contacted said that two ladies who
went to Orchard at 4:PM on 29.05.09 did not return back. Relatives
approached the Police Station Shopian at 12:AM and Police Party recovered
the dead bodies at 6:AM today. Postmortem conducted revealed no marks of
violence on the dead bodies including pubic parts,” Police statement no.
S-1/09/744 of May 30, 2009 said.



As soon as photographs of Asiya's body showing a deep wound in the middle
above her forehead appeared, police withdrew the statement. “Please treat
press note No. 744 dated 30.05.09 titled "Two ladies died in Shopian"
canceled,” said the later police statement.



Where did the need for the police to lie about visible marks of violence on
the body come from, a question everybody in Kashmir is asking.



*Intent behind cover-ups:*



District police officials privately admit that the then state police
intelligence chief, DGP CID Dr Ashok Bhan anxiously called the SP over phone
on May 30 and asked him to hurry burial of the two dead women. “He (the SP)
was told not to let the protests spread and do everything to contain the
matter so that this year also doesn't go the way the last year did,” said a
police officer. The police feared that the incident might trigger a
situation like that by the Amarnath land row of 2008 when hundreds of
thousands staged anti-India protests across Kashmir. The establishment's
fears came to be close to true before a police crackdown on the separatist
leaders was underway. The draconian Public Safety Act, that allows the state
to detain a person for as long as two years without trial, was used against
leaders and protestors alike to contain the situation.



The powerful Bhan was also the first senior official who briefed chief
minister Omar Abdullah about the incident at the Srinagar airport when he
arrived from New Delhi a day after the incident. The Director General of
Police, Kuldeep Khoda was away in the USA at that time. From the airport,
Abdullah came straight to address a press conference and announced a one-man
judicial probe by Justice (Rtd) Muzaffar Jan while going along with the
initial police version that the victims “appeared to have died due to
drowning”. This despite the fact, that doctors at Shopian hospital had by
then actually ruled it out as the cause of death.



As part of a massive shake up in the police department, Abdullah later
punished Bhan by removing him as his intelligence chief when the government
lost face in the wake of the judicial probe concluding that the victims were
indeed raped and murdered.



However, by then a series of rumors ostensibly directed at proving the
police right, at least in establishing that men in uniform were not
involved, had eroded the government's credibility. These rumors were
directed at questioning the moral character of the victims themselves and
Shakeel Ahangar, who is the brother of the younger teenaged victim and
husband of the other.



Some of these rumors - published in various local newspapers - like the one
which said that the victims may have developed illicit relations with some
men during their “frequent” visits to their orchard found their way even
into the judicial probe report • despite the family maintaining that it was
only the second time ever Asiya had visited the orchard.



The *Indian Express* mentioned in a report on July 11, 2009: “The purpose of
their regular and frequent visit to the orchard could not be established so
far...It is quite possible that during these frequent visits to the orchard
in last six/seven months, they (but more particularly Neelofar Jan) might
have developed some relation with other persons,” the report, quoting the
Jan Commission said.



http://www.indianexpress.com/news/shopian-panel-even-suspects-victim/488070/0



 No newspaper story ever mentioned the fact that Shakeel often used to drive
his wife and other sister, Romi Jan, to the orchard that he had bought just
over six months before the incident.



Justice Jan, who failed to identify the culprits but did not rule out
involvement of “some agency of police”, later disowned these rumors saying
that they were part of the police investigation mixed with his report by the
government.



“I don't know how it happened. Maybe CDs distributed among mediapersons have
clubbed them mistakenly…I don't know,” Justice Jan was quoted in the report
by *The Indian Express* as having said.



*The anonymous letter leak:*

* *

As an unprecedented and long protest shutdown in Shopian town ended on
appeals and assurances of justice from the chief justice of the state high
court, information about the arrival of an anonymous letter (written
purportedly by some schoolmate of Asiya) at Shopian police station was
leaked to PTI. The PTI report about the letter sought to again create new
confusion and suggested that Shakeel may have been involved in killing his
wife and sister.



PTI reported on Aug 04, 2009: “The letter, which was received at a Police
station in this newly carved out district in the Kashmir valley, claims that
the two were on friendly terms and this was not liked by her brother Shakeel
Ahmed Ahanghar.



The letter was posted immediately after unrest broke out following recovery
of two bodies of Aasiya and her sister-in-law Neelofar on May 30 but it was
reported to have been delivered at the police station only after the
47-day-long protests ended, sources said…The writer of the letter claimed
that he had met Aasiya on the fateful day of May 29 along with Neelofar at
the nearby orchards that evening."



The PTI report continued, saying: “However, they were spotted by Shakeel,
prompting the two women to run away from the area, the writer of the letter
said while requesting the police to investigate the matter fearing the
victims may have been murdered by family members.”



A close examination of the contents of the letter, revealed by a police
official close to the SIT and confirmed by the MM, clearly indicate that it
was written with an intension of misdirecting the investigation, while the
PTI was playing along. The content of the short letter, according to these
sources, is like this: *“Mein Asiya ko bahut chahta tha. Hum baghoon mein
miltay thay. Us din bhi hum milay aur Shakeel nay hum ko dekha* (I used to
like Asiya very much. We used to meet in the orchards. That day also we met
and Shakeel spotted us).



The PTI report, quoting official sources said that the undated letter was
written very soon after the mysterious death of the sisters-in-law. However,
the use of the word “us din” (that day) suggests that the letter may
actually have been written much later with a clear design of bringing
Shakeel under suspicion of having murdered his wife and sister.



*The mind of the judicial probe: *



Earlier, the Jan Commission report had also delved in detail over the
circumstances of Shakeel's marriage with Neelofar, suggesting that their
different cast and social backgrounds could have provided a motive for the
crime.



The July 11 report in *The Indian Express* also mentioned: The report (Jan
Commission) calls for a probe into the “rift” between the family of Neelofar
and her in-laws. The fact that Neelofar, a woman from the upper-caste Peer
family, eloped with Shakeel Ahmad Ahangar • who belongs to a family of
blacksmiths…The report calls for a detailed investigation into the possible
role of Neelofar's estranged brother, Zeerak Shah, a police constable. “It
is required that sustained questioning/interrogation of Zeerak Shah, his
associates and relatives, be carried out so as to work out the possibility
of their involvement in rape and murder of Neelofar and Asiya Jan”.



The report further mentioned: The commission also puts a question mark on
the conduct of Shakeel Ahmad Ahangar, Neelofar's husband and Asiya's
brother. Claiming that he is “known for his immoral activities,” the report
says: “His assets are quite disproportionate to his known source of income,
thus requiring in-depth investigation to work out the possibility of Shakeel
and his friends/associates in the present incident.”



Locals in Shopian say that the spotlight on these official allegations was
aimed at obfuscation and taking public attention away from men in uniform,
including army and CRPF personnel primarily being accused of the crime from
soon after the victims' bodies were found.

* *

*Rumor for a purpose and grapevine: *



Kashmir has historically been amenable to the  grapevine which has often
been used by the officialdom to its advantage. (Ref Associated Press:
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/apr/29/news/adfg-rumor29 ). There even is a
rumor making rounds for years now that the state police have a Dy SP rank
official designated inside its Special Branch (SB) to generate and spread
rumors for dealing with difficult public order situations.



 Interestingly, all the rumors around the Shopian twin rape and murder case
appear to have either emanated from district police officials or from the
investigation reports. A close scrutiny of some of the media reportage
around the incident reveals how information initially reported as rumors in
newspapers came to be mentioned as facts or revelations in later reports.



People in Shopian say rumors have been generated all along to shield the
perpetrators and the rumor mill knows the culprits (This is a common
assertion in Shopian that almost everybody you talk to makes).



*Missing track in the investigations: *



In all the investigations so far, including the ongoing one by the CBI,
circumstantial evidences have received very little or no focus at all.
Strikingly, a survey of the area along Ranbi Ara reveals what is hard to
miss - that the two spots where the victims' bodies were found are the only
two places approachable by a vehicle in that stretch. In the dark, the area
is covered by flood-lit surveillance of army and CRPF camps nearby.  The
bodies were deposited at these spots after 2:30 AM when the police party
accompanied by Shakeel and other family members abandoned the search before
resuming around 6:30 AM when the victims' bodies were found. The bodies were
not seen there during the earlier search. Is that the track the
investigators should follow?