Kashmir shutdown in protest at 'cover-up' of deaths

Protesters accuse security forces of killing the women

Protesters brought Indian-administered Kashmir to a standstill on Tuesday amid claims that a federal inquiry into the deaths of two women is a cover-up.

Locals allege the women, who died in the town of Shopian in May, were raped and murdered by security forces.

But on Monday India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told the high court in Srinagar they had died by drowning.

The families of the women told the court that the CBI report was trying to protect the guilty.

The discovery of the women's bodies led to weeks of violent protests earlier this year.

'False reports'

Tuesday's protests shut shops across the Kashmir valley and brought traffic to a standstill, reports the BBC's Altaf Husain in Srinagar.

People in the Muslim-dominated valley believe the CBI report is a cover-up, our correspondent says.

One resident Mohammad Yusuf said: "How could two women drown at the same time in a canal which had a low water level?"

Afroz Hussain, another resident, said: "Why did [chief minister] Omar Abdullah repeatedly apologise to people for calling it a case of drowning in the beginning if he was convinced that the women had not been murdered?"

In its report presented to the high court on Monday, the CBI accused 13 people - six doctors, five lawyers and two civilians - of fabricating a false case.

The CBI report says the doctors gave false post-mortem reports and sent slides that had been tampered with for DNA examination.

It absolved four police officers arrested for destroying evidence, saying the charges against them had not been substantiated.

Campaigners told the high court the CBI had not recorded vital information provided by the relatives of the two women.

A separate judicial probe into the incident ruled that the "involvement of some agency of the police cannot be ruled out".

Exhumations

The bodies of Neelofar Jan, 22, and her 17-year-old sister-in-law, Ayesha, were found in the canal in Shopian on 30 May.

The women had gone missing the previous evening.

State authorities at first said the women had drowned, before admitting they had been raped and murdered.

Facing charges of a cover-up and with no-one brought to justice, the state government handed over the investigation to the CBI.

It had the bodies of the women exhumed in September in a fresh attempt to determine what happened to them.