The CBI on Monday exhumed the bodies of the two Shopian women who were allegedly raped and murdered in mysterious circumstances around four months ago — a case which the agency took after the Special Investigation Team of the state police failed to identify the culprits.

The bodies were examined by a team of doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, headed by Dr T D Dogra. The team had been specially flown in to the Valley on Sunday. The team took 23 samples — 15 from Asiya Jan and eight from Neelofar Jan. The future course of the case hinges on the reports of the forensic examination of these samples which, a doctor at the spot said, might “take a while to come”.

“The doctors took samples from lungs, uterus, bone, hair, etc. These samples will go through different tests and the results may take almost a month to come,” said Dr Ghulam Qadir Khan who was present with the AIIMS team as a representative from Majlis Mushawarat, a small group of town’s elders, striving for justice in the case. Khan said the tests would establish whether the rape had occurred or not. “The entire process was completed in a transparent manner,” he added.

However, Dr Sudhir Gupta, Associate Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine, AIIMS, who was not part of the team of doctors who examined the bodies, said that even though the female genitalia is usually resistant to decomposition, after three months it is highly unlikely that exhuming the decomposed bodies would help in investigations. “The uterus usually does not decompose easily but after three months it is difficult to say with certainty which parts of the organ will be intact. In a case of a sexual assault, forensic experts usually look for injury on the organ and discharge. Even if the body is kept in a deep freezer, after five days, the discharge is lost as the vagina is infected due to assault. It is impossible to establish anything from this exercise of exhuming the bodies of the victims,” he said.

... contd.