The Central Bureau of Investigation comes directly under the Prime Minister’s Office
Srinagar: Ahead of the Supreme Court’s hearing of a petition on transferring the Kathua rape and murder case trial out of Jammu and Kashmir, a controversial group of women, which goes by the name of ‘Group of Intellectuals and Academicians’ (GIA) have ‘claimed’ to submit a “fact finding” report.
The report has been submitted to the minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Dr Jitendra Singh and home minister Rajnath Singh, questioning the J&K police’s investigations into the case of the rape and murder of a minor Muslim Bakerwal girl of Kathua district of Hindu majority Jammu region. The Central Bureau of Investigation comes directly under the PMO.
The report says that “private parts (of the victim) weren’t severed with intense bleeding” suggesting that there is no rape. The report also mentions that the “Crime branch team consists of two ethnic Kashmiris apart from SSP and in a sensitive case like this one, and in a state like J&K this matters”, suggesting that the investigation included Muslim officers and thus cannot be trusted.
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The report also claims that “hundreds of outsiders including people from Kashmir joined the protests, raised pro-Pakistan slogans and the villagers were terrorized”, no evidence of which is currently available.
It is unclear as of now, who authorized this group to find the “facts”, but the group’s ideological and political posturing leaves nothing to imagination.
The all women organization GIA is about three years old, and works on “Indian nationalism” and the “welfare of Hindus”, among other social issues such as “women empowerment”.
Some of the memoranda listed on the organisation’s website include those addressed to the HRD minister regarding removing “anti-national” elements from NIT, Srinagar.
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Most of the seminars it has organised hinge on the topic of “nationalism”. Some of them include “Atrocities done on RSS/BJP in Kerala” and “The anti-nationalistic activities in Ramjas College, Delhi University”. It has also organised seminars on women in India, saying that family is more important for women.
The team that has presented a “fact finding report” on Kathua rape and murder case includes Monika Arora, associated with RSS’s student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) who contested from Delhi’s Malviya Nagar assembly seat on a BJP ticket in 2003.
The “fact finding team” includes Meera Khadakkar, a retired district judge from Nagpur. Khadakkar is the president of the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, an all-India lawyers’ association affiliated to the RSS, and also heads the Nagpur chapter of the Jammu Kashmir Study Centre, a Right-leaning think tank.
