Srinagar, Kashmir  - The bodies of two women allegedly raped and murdered in Indian-administered Kashmir were exhumed on Monday to allow police to gather forensic evidence, officials said Monday.

A team of federal investigators collected samples from the graveyard in Shopian town nearly four months after the case sparked massive riots in the region, officials said.

Senior inspectors from India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences were in Shopian, 52 kilometres south of state capital Srinagar, for the probe.

The bodies of the two women were recovered from a canal on May 30 after they went missing a day earlier. Their deaths led to nearly 50 days of protests in the Muslim-majority region in which at least four people were killed and dozens injured.

Four police officials were alleged to have destroyed vital evidence related to the case. They were suspended from duty and arrested but were recently released on bail.

The case put the credibility of the state government at stake as the state chief minister Omar Abdullah had initially denied rape and murder had taken place and said the women had drowned.

The investigations were handed over to the CBI after the state government approached the agency earlier in September.

In a new twist to the case, the gynaecologist who had conducted autopsies on the bodies of the victims confessed Sunday that she did not take vaginal swabs from the victims, the IANS news agency reported.

She told investigators that she had instead used slides which she had taken from two of her patients in the local hospital.

The probe was handed over to the CBI after the state police's special investigating team failed to crack the case.

The picturesque yet troubled Kashmir region has seen a militant secessionist movement which has left nearly 45,000 people dead since it peaked in the late 1980s.(dpa)