A court in the national capital acquitted 10 accused of various charges including unlawful assembly and arson in a case of riots in northeast Delhi in 2020. The court said that the testimony of three policemen in the case is not credible. The court remarked that the ‘fabric of the claim’ made by the investigating officer (IO) and three police eyewitnesses raised doubts regarding the identity of the accused.
Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala was hearing the case against 10 accused booked by the Gokalpuri police station for several offences, including arson and house trespass.
The prosecution claimed that the accused were part of the riotous mob that broke into and committed robbery on the first floor of a building in Chaman Park area of Brijpuri, besides vandalising and setting on fire a pizza shop on the ground floor during the communal riots of February 24, 2020.
The court took note of the evidence presented and in its verdict pronounced on Wednesday said that two eyewitnesses in the case had given “contradictory statements” about the shop being set on fire by the rioting mob and this raises doubts about their credibility.
The court took note of Head Constable Sanjay’s testimony about being on duty with constable Vipin and assistant sub-inspector Hari Babu. The court said that according to the duty roster of that day, Vipin and Babu were on duty at Chaman Park, while Sanjay was on duty at Johripur.
The court said there was no evidence to prove that Sanjay was instructed to perform duty along with two other police personnel. It said, “Thus, there is another gap in the prosecution’s evidence which presents a contradictory picture. This gap adversely affects the credibility of the claims made by the above three eyewitnesses.”
The court also noted a discrepancy in the statement of Inspector Manoj, the third investigating officer (IO) in the case, according to which he found out that after reading the case file on April 8, 2020, Sanjay, Vipin and Babu were on duty in Brijpuri area. However, the court said that as per the evidence produced before it, when the duty roster file was given to the investigating officer on April 7, it was not included in it.
“The question is, if the duty roster was not put up in the file, how could they come to know about the duties of prosecution witness six (Vipin), prosecution witness nine (Sanjay) and prosecution witness 13 (Babu) on analysis of the file? Thus, such a claim appears to be fabricated,” the judge said.
He said, “I can understand that there may be a delay in taking the investigation forward due to the ongoing problems in the form of managing the after-effects of the riots and Covid-19. However, fabricated claims are a different thing, which raises doubts about the veracity of the claim made by the IO and the above police eyewitnesses.”
The court also noted that complainant Narinder Kumar, his wife Poonam Johar and eyewitness Shyam were declared hostile witnesses as they did not support the prosecution’s claim regarding the identification of the accused.
The judge said, “I think the charges against all the accused have not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.” With this, the court acquitted 10 accused Mohammad Shahnawaz, Mohammad Shoaib, Mohammad Faisal, Mohammad Tahir, Shahrukh, Rashid, Azad, Ashraf Ali, Parvez and Rashid of all the charges.
(This news has not been edited by the NDTV team. It has been published directly from the Syndicate feed.)
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