Police Tampered With Evidence of Gujarat Carnage: CBI Report

NEW DELHI, 13 February 2004 — The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), entrusted with the probe of charges framed by a Gujarat riot victim against the state government, filed its report in the Supreme Court yesterday.

The victim — Bilkis Yakub Rasool — had alleged that on March 3, 2002, she and three other women were gang raped by 30 people when they were trying to escape to safety from the riotous frenzy that had spread in Gujarat.

Besides, 14 members of her family were murdered in the communal violence. She managed to survive because the attackers took her for dead.

Bilkis alleged in her petition that as the Gujarat government had failed to bring the culprits to book, she had approached the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe. Her petition is due to be heard today.

The CBI’s investigations have revealed lapses in the police probe and tampering with evidence, sources said.

The 30-page report confirms the medical report of Godhra Medical College which indicated that Bilkis was gang raped, sources said.

Gujarat police had closed the Bilkis case saying that there was not enough evidence to pursue it.

They also accused her of changing her stand every time she was called for questioning. Earlier, the Gujarat government had turned down the National Human Rights Commission’s request for handing over the Bilkis case to CBI.

Upon the supreme court’s intervention, CBI officials camped in village Panivela near Ahmedabad and investigated the entire case, bringing certain gory details to light. The CBI report states the recovery of a mass grave near a river in Panivela, where apparently 14 relatives of Bilkis were buried.

The report also gives interrogation details of 13 people arrested in the case, including a head constable of Gujarat police.

The CBI probe had a major breakthrough when it traced a local photographer R.K. Soni in Dahod district who had been called by the police to take pictures of the bodies following their autopsy. Clothes in the post-mortem photographs apparently match the clothes exhumed from the mass grave.