New Delhi, December 11 (KMS): Independent Women's Initiative for Justice in Shopian (IWIJ) has said that a sustained and calculated effort has been made by the authorities in Kashmir in collaboration with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to hush up the Shopian rape and murder case.

 
IWIJ members, addressing the newsmen in New Delhi after release of 35 pages preliminary report named ‘Shopian: Manufacturing a Suitable Story’, said that the evidences had been systematically and deliberately destroyed, tampered with and diluted to misdirect and obfuscate the investigation in the case. IWIJ representatives included Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal, Seema Misra, Uma Chakravarti, Usha Ramanathan and Vrinda Grover.

They contested the CBI’s investigation report according to which both the women were died due to drowning, adding, during their team's visit to Shopian in August they found that the water in the stream was only ankle-deep, not enough for anybody to drown in it.

Faying the puppet administration for playing a balancing game with regard to the situation in Shopian, they said that the administration deliberately brought in the CBI because it wanted its neck out of the messy situation in Shopian. 

They said that the troops enjoyed draconian powers in the form of Armed Forces Special Powers Act. “CBI has tried to put investigation in cold storage and is waiting for an opportune moment when it can be revealed,” they added.

IWIJ members said that it was not just that two women were buried, exhumed and buried again. “Justice itself is well and truly buried all across Kashmir - in Shopian for certain," they added.

The members said that the photographs of the bodies showed signs of injuries and wounds. They said that yet the police announced the drowning as the cause of death. »