TCN News
Nine retired IPS officers have written to S.N. Shrivastava, IPS Police Commissioner of Delhi, raising objections against the “flawed investigation into the Delhi riots.”
The statement comes after Julio Ribeiro condemned Delhi Police action against youth activists and scholars being incarcerated for participating in anti-CAA movements across the country. The letter questions the faulty investigative procedures of the authorities, with signatories from a larger group of retired officers belonging to different services, known as Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), of which Julio Ribeiro is one of the most valued members.
The signatories include Shafi Alam (Former Director General of National Crime Records Bureau), K Saleem Ali (Former Special Director of CBI & GoI), Mohinderpal Aulakh (Former Director General of Police, Punjab), A S Dulat (Former OSD on Kashmir), Aloke B Lal (Former Director General of Prosecution, Uttarakhand), Amitabh Mathur (Former Director Aviation Research Centre), Avinash Mohananey (Former Director General of Police, Sikkim), P G J Nampoothiri (Former Director General of Police, Gujarat) and A K Samanta (Former Director General of Intelligence, West Bengal). On behalf of a larger police fraternity and group, the signatories have expressed that “it is indeed is a sad day in the history of Indian police that the investigations and challan submitted in the court by Delhi Police in connection with riots of this year are widely partisan and politically motivated,” and therefore “pains all those police officers, serving as well as retired.”
The letter also highlighted that one of the Special Commissioners of Delhi Police “had tried to influence investigations claiming resentment among Hindus over the arrest of some rioters belonging to their community,” condemning the act as “a majoritarian attitude” which, if present in the police leadership “leads to a travesty of justice for the victims of violence and their family members belonging to minority communities.” This ongoing targeted attack on minorities, the letter states, would further mean that “the real culprits of the violence belonging to the majority community are likely to go scot free.”
Speaking about the Delhi riots chargesheet, the signatories said that basing investigations on “disclosures without concrete evidence violates all principles of fair investigation,” outlining that such kind of a biased investigation “will only make people lose faith in democracy, justice, fairness and the Constitution which would ultimately shake the pillars of an orderly society and lead to breakdown of law and order.”
With regard to the recent witch hunt of activists and rights workers, the letter stated that in implicating leaders and activists, who expressed their views against CAA, the police have left out “all those who instigated violence and are associated with the ruling party,” while all those who spoke and joined protests against Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) have been arrested for “simply exercising their fundamental rights of freedom of speech and peaceful protests as guaranteed by the Constitution.”
On the basis of the above, the group of retd IPS officers has requested the Delhi Commissioner of Police for a reinvestigation of all riot cases “fairly and without any bias based on sound principles of criminal investigations to provide justice to the victims and their families and for upholding the rule of law.”