Tarique Anwar, TwoCircles.net
New Delhi: Shadab Alam, 25, was sitting on the roof of a pharmacy, where he used to work, in Wazirabad with few others on February 24, 2020.
“The police arrived and told us to close the shop because arson was taking place. We shut the shop and went upstairs,” he recalls.
A while later, he says, the cops returned, came to the roof, asked for our names, took us downstairs and pushed us into their van. We were taken to the police station.
“They said they were detaining me and would release after questioning,” he narrates the sequence of events that unfolded the fateful day.
When Shadab asked the police why he was being detained, he was allegedly told, “You were involved in the riots.”
It took him 80 days to secure bail and four years to prove his innocence.
In March last year, Delhi’s Karkardooma Court ruled that the police had no evidence against Shadab and 10 other co-accused, discharging them from the case.
When the police file a chargesheet, the court reviews it to determine whether charges should be framed against the accused. If there is insufficient evidence, the accused are discharged, and the case is dismissed.
Five years have passed since the deadly communal violence in Northeast Delhi, many are still struggling to recover trauma and losses they suffered. While some remain imprisoned on riot-related charges, others have been acquitted after months in jail.
The police registered 758 First Information Reports (FIRs) related to the riots. Of the cases that have reached a verdict, over 80% have resulted in acquittals or discharges. A total of 20 cases resulted into convictions, while in 106 cases, the accused were acquitted or discharged.
Over these five years, courts have repeatedly criticised the police investigation. In some cases, judges even expressed doubts that individuals had been falsely implicated.
Meanwhile, there are people whose trials have not even started yet.
We reached out to the police for their stance on these cases,but got no response. However, in an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court, the city police claimed that every case had been investigated fairly and impartially.
On February 23, 2020, in Dayalpur, a chicken shop, owned by a Muslim man, was set on fire, and several Hindu-owned vehicles were vandalised. After receiving multiple complaints, the police arrested 11 individuals (all Muslims). The cops claimed that a protected informant identified nine of them, while CCTV footage implicated the others.
The police later filed four chargesheets in the case and presented two eyewitnesses. These witnesses claimed they had seen a group of Muslims chanting slogans and vandalising property.
However, the case did not hold up in court. The trial never even began. The court discharged all accused on the stage of chargesheet.
Testimonies of the eyewitness, the court ruled, were highly vague. “It appears that either they did not even witness the incident firsthand, or their statements were fabricated,” said the court, raising several concerns about the police investigation.
The judge noted that Mohammad Mumtaz, the owner of the chicken shop, had told the police that some individuals were chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram while setting fire to his shop.
The court commented that in a communal riot, it is unlikely that a group of Muslims would burn down a Muslim-owned shop. The judge also pointed out that police were present at the scene when the shop was set ablaze, and they should have immediately identified the culprits.
With these remarks, the court acquitted all 11 accused.
Shadab was present in court when this verdict was pronounced. “Inside the jail, they (the inmates) tried to scare us by saying we would be sentenced for long. But I was not afraid because I knew I had no involvement in the violence,” he says.
He submitted CCTV footage from the pharmacy where he worked, along with his cell phone location data, as evidence in court.
Shadab’s father, Dilshad Ali, handled all the legal proceedings, from hiring lawyers to attending court hearings and applying for bail.
“When he (Shadab) was arrested, we applied for bail in two different courts, but it was denied. We even wrote to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). It took us 80 days to finally secure bail,” he says.
Shadab also told the court that the police had beaten him in the prison and provided medical reports showing injuries at three different places on his body.
For the family, those days were extremely difficult.
“It all happened during the (Covid-induced) lockdown. The entire family was struggling. My two-year-old grandson kept crying, ‘Papa, Papa.’ It was heartbreaking,” says Dilshad.
Shadab feels that while he finally received justice, it took far too long. “For four years, I kept getting hearing dates by the court. This case wasted so much of my time, and my family suffered enormous stress.”
Even now, the wounds from the ordeal have not fully healed. He and his father believe that they deserve compensation. “We spent lakhs of rupees on this case,” they say.
Dilshad asks, “We got justice, but not completely. If someone falsely accused us, should not there be consequences for them too?”
Acquittals have taken place on both sides (Hindus and Muslims), and courts have reprimanded the police on several occasions for carrying out shabby investigations.
On January 8 this year, a court acquitted an accused named Sandeep Bhati. He was charged with being part of a mob that assaulted a 25-year-old man named Shahrukh, who suffered serious injuries. The police had also linked six other cases of theft and vandalism to him.
The police arrested Sandeep in December 2020 based on a seven-second video, which allegedly showed him assaulting the victim.
His lawyer presented the full 12-second video in the court. The missing five seconds, which the police had omitted, showed that Sandeep was actually trying to protect the survivor rather than attacking him.
Karkardooma Court Judge Pulastya Pramachala ruled, “The police had full video (which was viral on Internet) but deliberately edited out the part where the accused was helping the victim. This shows that the investigating officer did not conduct a fair investigation and attempted to falsely implicated the accused.”
The judge directed the Delhi Police Commissioner to take note of this issue and initiate appropriate action against the investigating officer.
The court also criticised the investigators for not properly probing all complaints. The judge stated that “the investigating officer failed to fulfil their duty” and ordered a fresh probe into the six other complaints.
Meanwhile, many people still have family members in jail whose trials have not even begun.
One such case is FIR No. 59/2020, related to an alleged conspiracy behind the riots. The police claim that activists and students involved in protests against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and then proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR) in December 2019 conspired to incite the violence in the national capital.
There are 20 accused in this case, including Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Meeran Haidar, Khalid Saifi, Gulfishan Fatima, Shifa Ur Rahman, Athar Alam, Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal. Of them, six have been granted bail, while 12 remain in prison.
They have been charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), a stringent anti-terror law that makes securing bail extremely difficult.
Gulfisha, who earned master’s in business administration, had aspirations of pursuing a PhD. The police allege that she attended meetings where plans for road blockades and violence were made and that she distributed stones and chili powder to women for attacking the security forces and Hindus.
She has been in jail since April 2020. She was 28 years old when she was arrested. She is now 33.
Her parents anxiously await the conclusion of the case. Her father, Syed Tasneef Hussain, says he has faith in the Constitution and the courts but adds, “Days pass, but nights don’t. Sometimes, I fear I may not live to see her released.”
When asked what he would say to his daughter upon her release, he replies, “I cannot tell you that. Sometimes, happiness comes at a great cost.”
Gulfishan’s mother, Shakra Begum, breaks down in tears while talking about her daughter. “I do not know how we ended up in such a big crisis. We were not educated, so we made sure our children were. We thought education would protect them from hardships, but instead, it has brought us this unimaginable suffering,” she says.
Time has come to a standstill for her. “We are just getting through the days. This ordeal has drained us.”
Gulfisha’s parents speak to her on a video call every week and meet her during court hearings. They say that even while being in jail, it is Gulfisha who gives them strength.
A lot has changed in five years. Their 28-year-old daughter is now 33. The pictures of her at home have started to fade. She used to write letters from jail, but she has stopped now. “She does not send letters anymore because my husband used to cry while reading them. Thinking that her father would be distressed, she decided to stop writing,” Shakra says.
Tasneef says his dream is to one day go and bring Gulfisha home from jail. Even after five years, he takes pride in the fact that “people still ask about her. She has not been forgotten”.
The Karkardooma Court had rejected her bail plea, which is currently pending in the Delhi High Court. The hearings are moving at a slow pace. After months of proceedings, a judge was transferred, and now the bail plea is being heard all over again.
In a recent hearing, the judge told the government’s lawyer that they could not take so much time in arguing the bail plea and asked them to summarise the case concisely.
Meanwhile, the police have filed five chargesheets in the case, but the trial is yet to begin. The Karkardooma Court is still hearing whether the chargesheets form a strong enough case. If the court finds them valid, then trial will proceed.
Legal experts believe that since multiple accused are involved, this stage itself will see prolonged arguments.
So far, several obstacles have delayed the case. Initially, it was stuck for months over whether the accused should be given photocopies of the charges against them. This matter went to the High Court, where the police argued that printing thousands of pages would be too expensive.
Later, some of the accused demanded clarity on whether the police had completed their investigation. This was because even three years after the incident, the police were still filing fresh chargesheets, each stating that the investigation was “ongoing”.
The accused feared that if they pointed out weaknesses in the case, the police might file new chargesheets to cover those gaps.
After lengthy debates, when the judge finally ordered clarification, the police admitted that their investigation was complete. This process alone took a year.