In its status report to the Supreme Court on the mass murder and rape of 14 of Bilkis Yakoob Rasool’s relatives during the Gujarat riots, the CBI has brought to the court’s notice lapses on the part of Gujarat police in investigating the matter at the preliminary stage. The report, submitted today to registrar (judicial) B M Gupta, details the progress made by the CBI in its probe into the case. The plight of Bilkis, raped when she was five months pregnant and was fleeing rioters in March 2002, was highlighted by The Indian Express and the Supreme Court got the CBI to reopen the case. The status report contains the medical report of the Godhra Medical College which confirmed that Bilkis was raped. She watched eight of her relatives from a group of 14 also being raped and killed. As reported by The Indian Express, senior CBI officials and forensic scientists have confirmed that pieces of clothing exhumed from the site in Dahod — the CBI says this is where the victims where dumped — match those featured in photographs taken of the bodies when the Gujarat police hurriedly conducted the post mortem.The CBI last week managed to get seven photographs of the bodies—allegedly of Bilkis’s family—some with clothes on them and some covered with ‘‘coarse, unstitched’’ cloth. The breakthrough came when the CBI, after questioning the 12 suspects in its custody, traced a local photographer, R K Soni, from Limkheda in Dahod district. The CBI is also investigating the angle of suppression of evidence by the Gujarat police in the case and this is why the recovery of the garments could prove to be incriminating for the police: • The Gujarat police hurriedly cut pieces of the garments and sent them for chemical analysis 20 months ago when the killings took place. As per procedure, they should have sent the entire garments and tested them for blood and semen stains. • Soni’s photographs show coarse cloth covering some bodies and the Gujarat police had sent these cut pieces as a possible cover-up also for chemical analysis. • If the investigating team can establish that the garments recovered from the pit belonged to any of the seven ‘‘missing’’ members of Bilqis family, the Gujarat police will have a lot to answer for.
