NEW DELHI: A court has framed charges against 5 men for unlawful assembly, rioting, and murder of one Zakir during the Northeast Delhi riots. Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhatt framed charges against all accused persons under Sections 144 (Joining unlawful assembly armed with deadly weapon), 147 (Rioting), 148 (Rioting, armed with deadly weapon) and 149 (Unlawful Assembly) and added Section 302 (Murder) r/w 34 against four of them.
The court however noted that there is nothing on record to suggest that the deceased Zakir was killed in pursuance of any conspiracy hatched by the accused during the riots and did not add the charge of a criminal conspiracy under section 120B.
“It appears that the accused developed the common intention to kill the accused at the spur of the moment during the riotous clashes between their community and the person belonging to another community,” said the court.
“There is no escape from the conclusion at this stage that the accused were members of an unlawful assembly, the object of which was to cause riots, vandalism, destruction of property etc. and were part of the riotous mob which killed the deceased Zakir. Electronic evidence produced along with chargesheet shows their presence at the place of incident and in the mob,” the court said.
According to the chargesheet, four people namely Mehtab, Ashfaq Hussain, Zakir, and Jamil Samsul Haq were brought to GTB Hospital on February 26, 2020 in an injured and unconscious state. Upon examination all the four were declared dead. It was found that they had got injured during communal riots that erupted in Northeast Delhi on February 24, 2020 subsequent to the anti-CAA protests.