A sessions court in Delhi on Tuesday imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the police in a case related to the violence in the national Capital in February 2020, Bar and Bench reported. Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Yadav of the Karkardooma Court said that the investigation carried out in the matter was “callous and farcical”.
The court was hearing a revision petition filed by the Delhi Police against an earlier order directing it to register a First Information Report in the case.
On March 19 last year, Mohammad Nasir, a resident of Delhi’s Ghonda area, had filed a complaint with the Delhi Police, mentioning that he suffered a gunshot injury in his left eye on February 24, 2020. Nasir named Naresh Tyagi, Subhash Tyagi, Uttam Tyagi, Sushil, Naresh Gaur and others in the complaint, according to The Indian Express. Naresh Gaur is a former BJP MLA.
However, since no FIR was registered based on his complaint, he moved court. In October, a metropolitan magistrate ordered the Delhi Police to register an FIR in the matter within 24 hours.
The station house officer of the Bhajanpura police station then challenged the order and moved the sessions court. The police, in its revision petition, submitted that an FIR had already been filed in the matter which mentioned that Nasir and six others had suffered gunshot injuries. The petition also claimed that there was no evidence against the men named by Nasir and that three of them had alibis, The Indian Express reported.
However, the sessions court, in its order on Tuesday noted that the FIR mentioned by the police was related to incidents that took place on February 25 last year in Mohanpur and Maujpur localities, whereas the alleged attack on Nasir happened in Ghonda on February 24, 2020.
The judge observed that there was no provision to club separate complaints when they have been filed by two different complainants disclosing cognisable offences.
“The mandate of the Delhi High Court rules...has not been followed by either the police or by learned Illaka MM [local metropolitan magistrate] in the matter, which clearly goes on to establish that the investigation has been done in a most casual, callous and farcical manner,” the court said, according to Bar and Bench.
The court also took note that the police did not register a separate FIR after Nasir filed a subsequent complaint on July 3, 2020, alleging that he was being threatened by those he had named earlier.
“I have not been able to persuade myself about the efficacy and fairness of the investigation carried out in the matter,” the judge observed, adding that case diaries were not maintained as mandated by the Criminal Procedure Code.
Apart from the Rs 25,000 fine on Bhajanpura police station’s Station House Officer and his supervising officers, the court sent a copy of the order to Delhi commissioner of police “for bringing to his notice” the investigation in the matter and also asked him to take remedial action, according to The Indian Express.
Clashes had broken out between the supporters of the Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it between February 23 and 26 in North East Delhi, killing 53 people and injuring hundreds. The police were accused of either inaction or complicity in some instances of violence, mostly in Muslim neighbourhoods. The violence was the worst Delhi saw since the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.
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