Shopian doctors charged with fudging to defame security forces

SRINAGAR - The Jammu and Kashmir government has charged the team of doctors who carried out autopsies on two women in south Kashmir’s Shopian town last May with fudging evidence to defame the police and the security forces.

“It had been found that the accused doctors fabricated and fudged the slides with an objective of defaming the police and security forces thereby violating Rule 3 of J&K Employees Act 1971,” says a state government chargesheet against the doctors.

“The conduct and behaviour of the doctors had been prima facie found to have become cause of general strikes in the state and also resulted in the deaths of civilians,” the chargesheet adds.

Two women, Nilofar Jan, 22, and her sister-in-law Asiya Jan, 17, were found dead by the side of a stream in Shopian town on May 29 last year, triggering a Valley-wide agitation with people alleging that the duo had been raped and subsequently murdered by the security forces.

The allegations had been triggered by the utterances of a lady doctor posted in Shopian town who carried out the autopsies of the dead women along with other local doctors.

After the case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), fresh autopsies were conducted and sustained interrogation of the local doctors revealed that scientific evidence about the deaths of the two women had been fudged to give credibility to the allegations that the women had been raped and then murdered.

The CBI investigations had confirmed that the two women had died due to drowning.

The state government based its chargesheet on the CBI findings.