NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Friday discharged 12 surviving accused in the 2007 Jamia Nagar rioting case, rapping the prosecution for “concocted investigation” having “stock involvement of police witnesses” for identification, while terming several arrests as “contrived.”
In a 95-page order, Special Judge Vishal Gogne, who also ordered framing of charges against 13 accused, further slammed Delhi Police for serious lapses, particularly the failure to conduct a test identification parade, which he termed a “requirement of essence and not just prudence”.
According to the prosecution, on September 22, 2007, a riotous mob of around 1,500 people attacked the Jamia Nagar police post personnel. It said the local police had taken steps to remove a market which was allegedly creating a hindrance to people going for offering Namaz during the month of Ramzan.
The prosecution claimed that 12 local leaders instigated the mob to kill the policeman and burn down the police station, following which the post was set ablaze, several vehicles were torched, a service pistol, 10 live cartridges, valuables and a wireless set were looted, and multiple police officials were injured, of whom five suffered grievous injuries.
The judge rapped the prosecution while discharging the accused persons.
He said, “In the present investigation, it does weigh with the court that not only did the police officials avoid conducting a test identification parade (TIP) of the 11 persons who were arrested at the identification of at least two police persons each; the investigating officer (IO) even failed to consider the possibility of seeking arrest upon identification by one police witness while enabling TIP through the second police witness.”
The judge underlined that the absence of TIP proceedings creates substantial doubts on the validity of the identification of these accused through police witnesses.
He said, “Any interpretation of the evidence and the circumstances in which evidence has been collected or projected, which probablises a high-handed and blanket implication of accused persons, would certainly lower the aspersion of culpability from grave suspicion to mere suspicion. Such latter prospect entitles the accused to discharge.”
The judge said the arrest of two more accused persons later was similar to the 11 arrested earlier, and these arrests have the “hallmarks of a contrived and pre-determined arrest” which did not occur in the manner asserted in the chargesheet or through the statements of these (police) witnesses”.
The judge said the non-availability of public witnesses has the “classic imprint of a concocted investigation”, at least in relation to the implication of these 13 accused persons. “With the passage of almost 20 years since the incident, the seemingly stock involvement of police witnesses for identifying a large number of persons as rioters seems quite distant from evidence capable of incrimination,” the judge said.