U-turn by ‘victims’ in court, 2 ex-ministers, IAS official acquitted

Six years after they were booked on the charge of "procuring, inducing or taking a person for the sake of prostitution", two former J&K ministers and a senior bureaucrat were acquitted today by a special CBI court in what came to be known as the Srinagar sex scandal.

Giving them the "benefit of doubt", special CBI judge Vimal Kumar acquitted Ghulam Ahmed Mir, sitting MLA and a former minister, Raman Mattoo, former MLA and minister, Mohammad Iqbal Khandey, IAS, alleged sex ring kingpin Sabina and her husband Abdul Hamid Bullah. The couple, however, still face charges of rape in a case being tried in a different court.

A U-turn in court by three "victims" resulted in a clean chit to the accused. Of the more than 30 witnesses in the case, the three "victims" did not support the case of the prosecution.

The CBI had made out a case that the three "victims" were sex workers and were "procured" by the two former ministers and the IAS officer. But the three women retracted from their statements and denied they were sex workers. Declining to identify the three accused, the "victims" also denied that they were procured by the accused.

The CBI had earlier got the statements of the three "victims" recorded in the presence of judicial magistrates.

"Not only were their statements recorded and testified in the presence of judicial magistrates and independent witnesses but the written statements were translated in Kashmiri language and read out to the three sex workers," said advocate R K Handa, special public prosecutor for CBI.

But the three "victims" told the court that they had never met the accused. Handa had asked the court to initiate perjury proceedings against them. He had also claimed that the prosecution had sufficient evidence against the accused to prove that they had procured the three "sex workers" from a brothel allegedly run by Sabina.

... contd.

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