delhi high court
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The court acquitted three accused belonging to a particular community in a case related to the Northeast Delhi riots. Court raps Delhi Police for clubbing multiple complaints in case without investigation. Court acquits all three accused in main complaint and remands case relating to wrongly clubbed complaints back to probe agency .
Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala, Kadakardooma, said the allegations leveled against Akeel Ahmed, Rahish Khan and Irshad in connection with the incident at a shop at Chandu Nagar, Karawal Nagar Road are not proved beyond doubt.
The court also doubted the prosecution’s argument that the crowd was chanting Jai Shri Ram. The court said that it is difficult to believe that a crowd of people belonging to a particular community would chant Jai Shri Ram. It is clear from this that the police did not investigate the cases properly and completed the investigation by clubbing several cases together.
The court noted that in the charge sheet the investigating officer has mentioned that 27 complaints have been clubbed together in this case. However, on perusal of the list of complaints mentioned in the charge sheet, it could be found that the names of three complainants were mentioned twice in the list.
Further, there was a discrepancy in the serial numbers in the sense that there was no serial number 15 after serial number 14 and serial number 16 was given directly in the list. Thus, this list effectively refers to 23 additional complaints which were taken up for investigation in this FIR itself. The court noted that the IO could not point out 27 complaints when he was cross-examined.
The court further noted that after further questioning on the aspect of investigation conducted on additional complaints and evidence against the accused persons in connection with these incidents, the IO finally replied that he had found evidence against the accused persons in connection with the incident in the premises. The court said that they had clubbed the other complaints in this case with Danish’s as the crime scene was also located at a distance of about 100 to 300 meters from Danish’s premises. He then further stated that as per Asif’s complaint the spot of incident was about 300-400 meters away from Danish’s premises.
The judge further said that the IO was not even aware of the relationship with the police officer to add those complaints to the present FIR. In the case, a Danish had complained that his shop, courier service office was looted and burnt, causing him a loss of Rs 6-7 lakh. The Dayalpur police station later clubbed more complaints with Danish’s complaint based on the proximity of the place and the date of the incident.
The court noted that in respect of all the incidents mentioned in the charge sheet, including the incident at Danish shop, no time period of occurrence has been mentioned. “It was shown to have happened at an unknown time. The court further noted that Constable Piyush stated that there was a gathering of about 1500-2000 people on Karawal Nagar Road opposite Chandu Nagar and they were shouting slogans against CAA/NRC and Were ransacking the shops.
All the accused denied the allegations and pleaded innocence saying they were not present at the spot on the day of the incident and have been falsely implicated in the case. Advocate Mehmood Pracha, appearing for Akil Ahmed, alleged that the investigating officer tried to coerce witnesses and made sensational and exaggerated allegations against the accused with ulterior motives.