On Thursday, June 22, the Jammu and Kashmir government terminated the services of two doctors Bilal Ahmad Dalal and Nighat Shaheen Chilloo who collaborated with Pakistan to falsify the postmortem reports of Asiya and Neelofar who died in 2009 in the Shopian district. The two girls aged 17 and 22 respectively had reportedly died after accidental drowning on May 29th 2009. However, it was claimed back then that Asiya and Neelofar were raped and murdered by the Indian Army soldiers.
Reportedly, the doctor duo intended to falsely implicate the Indian army officials of murdering and raping the two girls. Dr Bilal Ahmad Dalal and Dr Nighat Shaheen Chilloo wanted to spread disaffection against the Indian armed forces. It has come to the fore that several people in the then Jammu and Kashmir government led by National Conference leader Omar Abdullah were aware of the accused doctor’s actions.
J&K govt has terminated Dr Bilal Ahmad Dalal and Dr Nighat Shaheen Chilloo from the service for actively working with Pakistan and hatching a conspiracy with its assets within Kashmir to falsify the post-mortem report of Asiya and Neelofar of Shopian, who had unfortunately died…
— ANI (@ANI) June 22, 2023
The death of Asiya and Neelofar back in 2009 had triggered violent protests led by Majlis-e-Mashwarrat. The situation could return to normal only after a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe found that the two sisters Asiya and Neelofar were neither raped nor murdered.
CBI back in 2009 had reportedly filed a chargesheet against six doctors, two civilians, five lawyers and the brother of the victim for fabricating evidence. It was alleged that the lawyers had coerced two civilians to turn witnesses. The CBI has also rejected the Majlis’s claim of rape and murder saying that the two women decided to cross the Rambiara river in Shopian as they were getting late. However, the two drowned in the river and died.
To back up its assertion, CBI produced statistics from the state irrigation department indicating that the Rambiara river recorded increased water discharge in that specific month in 2009.
Notably, the two teams of doctors which conducted the postmortem of the deceased girls had lied in their reports. The first team had claimed that Asiya died of cardio vascular arrest and Neelofar of neurogenic shock. The second team of doctors from Pulwama claimed sexual assault on both the girls.
The CBI investigation questioned the entire operation, claiming that doctors had assembled a piece of the heart and labelled it as lung components. Furthermore, the second team of doctors tampered with the vaginal swab samples. It didn’t belong to one of the women. Dr Nighat Shaheen failed to inform the CBI of where she obtained the samples. Moreover, the DNA tests on the 47 officials whose samples were gathered came up negative as well.
Back in 2010, India Today had published a report wherein they claimed to have accessed the call recordings of the doctors involved in the postmortem of Asiya and her sister-in-law Neelofar. According to the report, Dr Nighat Shaheen who was a part of the second team of doctors, “had concluded that the girls were raped without even examining their vaginas.”
Dr Nighat Shaheen and the other doctors had falsely stated in the report that Asiya’s hymen was ruptured. Later, when the doctors of AIIMS conducted the autopsy and concluded that Asiya’s hymen was intact.
