SRINAGAR: A protest strike shut down Indian-administered Kashmir on Tuesday after investigators said two women allegedly raped and murdered had actually died by drowning, triggering angry claims of a cover-up. Public anger and outbreaks of violence shook the region in May after the bodies of the two Muslim women were found in a stream. Locals said they had been sexually abused and killed by the security forces.
The strike closed shops, offices, banks and post offices in the Kashmiri summer capital of Srinagar and other Muslim-majority towns, including the victims’ home town of Shopian, witnesses said. Hundreds of Kashmiris held noisy anti-government demonstrations in Shopian overnight as authorities deployed riot police to avert any new mass unrest over the case.
‘We urge the people of Kashmir to observe a complete shutdown against the concocted story presented by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigations) before the court,’ Abdul Rasheed Deva, one of the protest leaders, told AFP. Police initially said the 17-year-old girl and her 22-year-old sister-in-law had drowned, but later agreed they might have been raped and murdered. In September, the CBI took over the case. In a report for India’s high court on Monday, the federal agency concluded that the two had drowned, ruling out rape and murder. Even some pro-India politicians rejected the CBI’s conclusions.
‘The whole charade of investigations by multiple agencies was aimed at shielding the culprits rather than bringing them to book,’ said Mehbooba Mufti, the leader of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party. The government has yet to react to the report.
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