Delhi court acquits 13 defendants in 2020 riots case

A court has cleared 13 defendants from the case of riots that took place in northeast Delhi in 2020, arguing that the statements given by the main prosecution witness was under "shadow of doubt.”

In the opinion of Additional Sessions Judge Parveen Singh, the footage used to identify suspects was of very poor quality.

"Considering the fact that this witness had suddenly become an eyewitness and in view of the above discussion that the testimony of PW8 as an eyewitness is under a shadow of doubt, it will be unsafe to rely upon the testimony of PW8 (prosecution witness 8)," the court said in its recent order.

This case is concerned with events that happened on February 25, 2020, in New Usmanpur police area where Raman Chauhan supposedly suffered injuries during communal riots. Chauhan testified that he was unable to identify any of the rioters that had assaulted him.

The New Usmanpur police registered an FIR against the 13 defendants including Mohammad Anas, Mobin, Mohd. Javed Khan alias Shanu, Faisal, Shahjad Khan alias Montu, Imran Khan, Badshah Khan, Irfan Khan, Siraj Khan, Arman alias Arbaz, Aman alias Suhail and Iqbal Khan alias Sonu.

Some of the crimes the suspects are charged with are rioting, rioting armed with deadly weapons, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy and disobedience of an order promulgated by a public servant.

The court ruled that the witness made the claim of not seeing anything during the investigation but later on he gave evidence to the court and recognized two of the perpetrators of the crime as shown in the video.

According to the opinion of the court, the alterations in the witness’ testimony made the evidence unreliable. The court added that the quality of the footage was low, light was dim and it was impossible to identify the features of the face.

The court also made a serious remark about the conspiracy and stated that the confiscation of arms could not lead to the formation of any conspiracy. The court pointed out that there were no details about the time and place as well as the method of undertaking the conspiracy.

Furthermore, the court found out that the prosecution did not follow the established procedure of issuing proclamations.

"In view of the above discussion, all the accused are accordingly acquitted of all the charges framed against them," the court said.