A Delhi court on Friday refused to order a first information report against Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Delhi minister Kapil Mishra for his alleged involvement in the violence that broke out in the city in February 2020, Live Law reported.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Ashwani Panwar passed the order in response to an application filed by a man named Mohammed Ilyas.
Panwar said that the demand for filing an FIR was “legally impermissible” in view of an order passed by the sessions court on November 11, The Indian Express reported. The sessions court had on that date set aside an order directing the Delhi Police to investigate the role of Mishra in the violence.
Panwar said on Friday that the findings of the sessions court had “are binding on this court and have attained finality”.
The additional chief judicial magistrate said that Ilyas’ application would instead be treated as a complaint, Live Law reported. “…The complainant is at liberty to lead evidence in support of his allegations under Section 210(1)(a) read with Section 223(1) of the BNSS [Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita],” Panwar said.
Ilyas was among the handful of citizens who approached the courts after police refused to register their complaints and file an FIR against Mishra for his alleged involvement in the riots that engulfed North East Delhi in February 2020. Fifty-three people died in the violence. The majority of them were Muslims.
Ilyas previously told Scroll that he had approached the police three times asking for a case to be registered against Mishra, but was told that they would register his complaint only against unspecified “rioters”.
The Delhi Police had alleged that there was a conspiracy to frame Mishra in the riots.
On April 1, Panwar’s predecessor, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasiya, had ordered the Delhi Police to held that there was enough material to warrant further investigation into whether Mishra had committed a cognisable offence. Mishra had filed a revision petition against the order.
On November 11, the sessions court, while setting aside the order, had said that the application should have clearly disclosed a cognisable offence, but did not do so, according to The Indian Express. “To assume cognizable offence, the ACJM relied analogies and inferences from Kapil Mishra’s questioning in the larger conspiracy case,” the court said.
Scroll reviewed six applications filed before magistrate courts in 2020 asking for first information reports to be registered against Mishra. All the complainants alleged that Mishra played a direct and active role in inciting violence against Muslim communities during the riots.
The complainants state that Mishra was present at locations where violence occurred. They allege that he was accompanied by groups of armed men and made hate-filled speeches in various parts of North East Delhi on February 23 and 24.
His speeches, they allege, included slogans such as “desh ke gaddaro ko, goli maro saalo ko” (shoot the traitors), “mullo ke do sthan, kabristan ya Pakistan” (Muslims only belong in two places: the cemetery and Pakistan) and “katwe murdabad” (down with Muslims – “katwe” being a derogatory term for Muslims in Hindi). Mishra is also alleged to have declared that “mullas” (another derogatory term for Muslims) and protestors need to be taught a lesson.
Also read: The futile, five-year struggle to lodge an FIR against Kapil Mishra
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