2020 Delhi riots: Court acquits 10 men of rioting, arson charges

New Delhi: A court here has acquitted 10 men of various charges, including for unlawful assembly and arson, in a case regarding the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, saying it was not safe to rely upon the testimonies of three police witnesses.

The court also observed that the "artificiality of the claim" made by the investigating officer (IO) and three police eyewitnesses created a doubt regarding their identification of the accused persons.

Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala was hearing the case against the 10 accused against whom the Gokalpuri police station had registered a case for several offences, including arson and lurking house trespass.

According to the prosecution, the accused were part of a riotous mob that vandalised and torched a pizza shop on the ground floor, besides trespassing and committing robbery on the first floor of a building in the Chaman Park locality of Brijpuri here during the communal riots of February 24, 2020.

Taking note of the evidence before it, the court, in its verdict pronounced on Wednesday, said two eyewitnesses in the case had taken "contradictory stands" about the shop being set on fire by a riotous mob and this dented their credibility.

Taking note of the testimony of Head Constable Sanjay about being on duty with Constable Vipin and Assistant Sub-Inspector Hari Babu, the court said according to the duty roster for the day, Vipin and Babu were assigned duty at Chaman Park while Sanjay was assigned duty in Johripur.

There was, however, no evidence to prove that Sanjay was directed to join the two other police officials, the court said.

"Thus, there is another gap in the evidence of the prosecution to give a contradictory picture. This gap goes on to adversely affect the credibility of the claims made by all aforesaid three eyewitnesses," it said.

The court also noted the discrepancy in the statement of Inspector Manoj, the third investigating officer (IO) in the case, according to which, after reading the case file on April 8, 2020, he came to know that Sanjay, Vipin and Babu were on duty in the Brijpuri area.

However, according to the evidence before it, the duty roster was not placed in the file when it was given to the IO on April 7, the court said.

"The question is that if the duty roster was not placed in the file, then how could he know about the duty of PW6 (Vipin), PW9 (Sanjay) and PW13 (Babu) on an analysis of the file? Thus, there appears to be an element of artificiality in such a claim," the judge said.

"I can understand that due to ongoing problems in the form of managing the after-effects of the riots and COVID-19, there could have been a delay in going ahead with the investigation. However, the artificiality of the claim is a different thing, which creates a doubt regarding the genuineness of the claim made by the IO and the aforesaid police eyewitnesses," he added.

The court noted that the complainant, Narender Kumar, his wife Poonam Johar and eyewitness Shyam were declared hostile as they did not support the prosecution's case regarding identifying the accused.

"Thus, the overall effect remains that I find it unsafe to rely upon the evidence of PW6, PW9 and PW13 to believe that all the accused persons were part of the mob, which had attacked upon the property," the judge said, adding, "I find that the charges levelled against all the accused persons are not proved beyond reasonable doubts."

The court acquitted the 10 accused -- Mohammed Shahnawaz, Mohammed Shoaib, Mohammed Faisal, Mohammed Tahir, Shahrukh, Rashid, Azad, Ashraf Ali, Parvez and Rashid -- of all charges.