NEW DELHI: Delhi Police on Monday urged a court to award death penalty to former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain and four others for murder of IB officer Ankit Sharma during 2020 riots, saying “they fell to the level of animals” while relentlessly assaulting the victim.
The submission was made before Additional Sessions Judge Praveen Singh, who reserved the order on quantum of punishment for Friday.
Seeking death penalty for the convicts, Special Public Prosecutor Madhukar Pandey told the court that Sharma was “abducted, assaulted relentlessly, and killed by them”. “They kept torturing him even after he died,” he said.
The court on July 14 convicted Hussain and four others for the offence punishable under sections 302 (murder), and 147 (rioting) of the IPC among others.
The prosecution on Monday asserted that the nature of the crime was heinous, brutal and fell under “rarest of rare” category, warranting death sentence. “This was a cold-blooded murder. These people turned into butchers during the crime.
There was not a single cloth except underwear on Sharma’s body. These people should be kept behind bars, (and) given death sentence,” Pandey said. He said those who did not show mercy during the riots shouldn’t be entitled to seek mercy.
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