The kingpin of 2006 high profile sex scandal of J&K, Sabina, was acquitted by a CBI special court Candigarh on Thursday along with four other accused. Nine charge-sheets were filed in the case. Sabina and her husband still face trial in other three cases whereas they have been acquitted in the remaining six. Next date of hearing in the three other cases is October 24.
The scandal surfaced after a video clip of one of her girls started doing the rounds in Srinagar in April 2006. The local elders brought clip to the notice of the police. A case was registered. As the dirty details emerged, Sabina was found running a brothel in Srinagar and luring young girls with jobs and monetary benefits and forcing them into prostitution. Police said 43 women, including a minor, were in the ring run under the patronage of influential men.
Two ministers in the then Congress-PDP government, G A Mir and Raman Mattoo, a BSF DIG, 10 senior police officers, an IAS officer and many businessmen were allegedly involved.
Sabina, a daughter of an Afghan national who swept into Kashmir during the 1965 war, spent her early childhood in Baramulla from where she moved to Srinagar. Her life changed when a real-estate agent swindled her money.
“During the same time, a woman I knew sent me to a police officer, who demanded sexual favours in return for the work,” she was once quoted as saying. “I refused at the time. But that is how I stepped into this murky world. I learnt soon that the only way to work in the system was by pandering to the demands of the powerful.”
Earlier, the same court had acquitted the two former Jammu and Kashmir ministers and a 1978-batch IAS officer Iqbal Khanday. So far, six witnesses have turned hostile in the case.
“All of them have been acquitted for want of evidence. The prosecution has failed to establish any link of the acquitted persons with the complainants. Besides, the victims also turned hostile in the court,” said a defence lawyer.
Sabina now lives with her husband and son in a rented accommodation on the outskirts of Srinagar. After she was sent to jail her means of sustenance dwindled.
“While the big guns were let off, I am still being hounded,” she said once. “I’ve lost everything, my livelihood, my health. I have nowhere to go.”
After the scandal came to light, for months together the Valley witnessed protests.
-Bilal Handoo
