A special CBI forensic team on Monday collected samples from the bodies of the two women allegedly raped and murdered here after exhuming them nearly four months since the occurrence of the incident, that sparked massive protests in the Kashmir Valley.
The team, which comprised senior doctors of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, collected number of samples from the bodies in a process that started at 7 in the morning after obtaining necessary approval of the family of the victims -- 22-year-old Neelofar and her 17-year-old sister-in-law Aasiya-- and continued for nine long hours.
The village, about 51 km from Srinagar and famous for Ambri apples, was agog with activity since midnight with police erecting screens around the graveyard and para-military forces setting up barricades that kept the general public and media away.
The team had brought some modern equipment that would help determine ante-mortem and post-mortem injuries on the bodies, officials said.
Bodies of Neelofar and Asiya were recovered from a stream on May 30 after they went missing in town the previous evening.
Their deaths had led to 47 days of protests in the town with locals alleging that security personnel were responsible for the crime.
Ahead of the exhumation, a doctor, who was part of the second post-mortem team from neighbouring Pulwama district hospital and had prepared the vaginal slides of the victims, had told CBI that no samples from the duo had ever been taken.
The doctor broke down during questioning and narrated the entire sequence of events to the CBI officials, official sources said, adding she claimed that the samples were taken from gloves used in the gynaecological ward of the district hospital and the slides prepared.
The CBI took over the investigation into the case on September 17 and a team headed by Deputy Inspector General Satish Golcha has been camping here since then.
The agency's Special Director S C Sinha had also visited the village recently and taken stock of the situation.
It had come to light last month that the vaginal swabs of the two victims sent to Central Forensic and Scientific Laboratory did not match with that of Neelofar and Aasiya.
Ahead of the CBI investigations, the state Government had appointed one-man commission headed by Justice (Retd) Muzzafar Jan which among other things had recommended a detailed questioning of the relatives of the victims including Neelofar's husband Shakeel Ahnger and her brother Zirar Shah. PTI
