A Delhi court has filed charges against ten suspects in the 2020 Northeast Delhi anti-Hindu riots, stating that their main goal was to instil fear in the minds of Hindu victims and threaten them with expulsion by looting and burning their belongings.
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Finding credibility in the statements of the witnesses, the Additional Sessions Judge Virendra Bhat observed:
“From the utterances of the rioters comprising the unlawful assembly, as mentioned by these witnesses in their statements, it is limpid that the object of the assembly was to create fear & panic in the minds of the people belonging to Hindu Community, threaten them to leave the country and to loot as well as burn their properties”.
The Judge made the comments while hearing a case filed by Jagdish Prasad, who claimed that rioters set fire to his son’s auto spare parts shop during a massive riot planned and executed in Delhi in February 2020 to target Hindus protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act. The Court was of the prima facie view that there was no ground to disbelieve the version of the witnesses.
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Mohd Shahnawaz, Mohd Shoaib, Shahrukh, Rashid, Azad, Ashraf Ali, Parvez, Mohd Faisal, Rashid alias Monu, and Mohd Tahir have been charged under sections :
147 (rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with a deadly weapon), 436 (mischief by fire), 452 (House-trespass with intent to assault), 454 (Lurking house-trespass), 392 (robbery), 427 (mischief) read with section 149 (unlawfull assembly) of IPC
On December 8, the Delhi court also framed charges against Shahrukh Pathan, the 2020 Delhi riot suspect who fired bullets at head constable Deepak Dahiya during riots in Northeast Delhi. The court also charged Kaleem Ahmad, Ishtiyak Malik alias Guddu, Shamim, and Abdul Shehzad, in addition to Pathan. All six prosecution witnesses who have named the defendant have given the same account of the riotous incident in this case. The Court stated that “all of them corroborate each other’s version in its entirety.”
The court stated that “these riots are of a nature that has not been witnessed since the Sikh Riots of 1984,” describing them as “not an ordinary case of individuals or groups committing unlawful acts.”