The court further said that a chargesheet was filed for multiple incidents in a mechanical manner without investigating the incidents properly.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — Acquitting a Muslim man accused of a role in the Northeast Delhi riots of 2020, Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala of the Karkardooma Court took a dim view of police making “artificial statements” on a mob’s involvement, filing multiple charge sheets in a “mechanical manner” and not investigating the incidents properly, LiveLaw reported on Friday.
Judge Pramachala hauled up the investigating officer (IO) and a constable, saying they had failed to prove the now acquitted Javed’s presence in an unlawful assembly beyond any reasonable doubt. It also said that the two had given conflicting descriptions of the case.
“IO was probably making an artificial statement in respect of the time of getting knowledge about the involvement of accused Javed in the incidents being probed in this case. That could be the reason for him to first claim that Ct. Pawan/PW9 had told him about the involvement of Javed on 27.02.2020 itself, but he could not say the reasons for not mentioning the name of Javed in the FIR,” the judge observed.
He further noted that the IO took advantage of a break in the recording of his evidence and changed his version to make it in consonance with the records of the case.
“Similarly, PW9 [constable] went on to give the wrong description of the location of the grill shop (shop of PW4) [the shop where the vandalism took place], while saying that it was situated at main Karawal Nagar road, near other shops i.e. shop of cooler (shop of PW3) and institute. The shop of PW4 was located in a different area of Nehru Nagar. Such false claim of PW9 shows that even he made an artificial statement regarding having properly seen the mob at the time of incidents in question,” the court said.
The court further said that a chargesheet was filed for multiple incidents in this case in a mechanical manner without investigating the incidents properly.
LiveLaw also noted that mere days ago, the judge had passed a similar order and said that it is suspicious that the Delhi Police’s investigating officer “manipulated evidence” and filed charge sheets in a riots case in a “predetermined and mechanical manner”.
In this case, which pertains to violence near R.P. Public School, one Salman had alleged that he was shot at by three boys. The court had hauled police for clubbing this case with that of a riotous mob because the accused are clearly mentioned as three boys here.
This FIR had been clubbed with a complaint by two people, Mujahid and Jameer, who had said that their shops had been destroyed in the violence.
The judge had earlier said that the investigation was illegally clubbed in the FIR on the “pretext of the proximity of the place of incident.”
Time and again, various courts in Delhi hearing the riots cases have out shoddy investigations by Delhi police, highlighting various oversights, small and big. Various fact-finding teams have also highlighted that the police’s investigation remains partisan and has ensured scholars and activists are in jail, while a large section of those who incited the riots are as yet not brought to book.
