Four days after escorting Bilkis Yakub Rasool to the forest where she was gangraped and 14 of her relatives killed by a mob during the post-Godhra riots, the CBI today summoned two Gujarat police officers for questioning. An Ahmedabad court had earlier rejected the officers’ petitions for anticipatory bail. The two officers, Deputy Superintendent of Police R S Bhagora and ACP R M Bhabhor, posted in Limkheda taluka at the time of the massacre and currently serving in the state CID and Ahmedabad traffic department respectively, have been summoned by the CBI to its Devgadh Baria camp. An ASI and a head constable have already been arrested for ‘‘tampering with evidence’’ and the CBI has informed the Supreme Court of the ‘‘poor’’ probe conducted by the Gujarat police in the case. The Bilkis case, highlighted by The Indian Express, is the first Gujarat riot case being investigated by the CBI on the Supreme Court’s orders. A court in Ahmedabad had earlier rejected Bhagora and Bhabhor’s anticipatory bail pleas on the ground that they were influential persons and could hamper investigation if granted anticipatory bail. In its status report to the Supreme Court, the CBI indicted the Gujarat police for the manner in which it investigated the gangrape-cum-murder case. Digging near the scene of the massacre, the CBI discovered skeletal remains of some of the victims. They also found clothes and footwear. In its status report to the SC, the CBI pointed out that the photograph of three-year-old Saleha, Bilkis’s daughter who was battered to death by the mob, was ‘‘missing’’ from the album of victims prepared by the Gujarat police. The first photograph of the massacre victims, taken a day after the killings on March 3, 2002, showed Saleha. A day later, police called another photographer to the site where the bodies were being buried. Saleha did not figure in the second picture. The CBI also informed the SC that a Gujarat head constable even threatened to ‘‘inject poison’’ if Bilkis mentined rape in her complaint.
