TCN News
New Delhi: Over 1000 professionals including journalists, academics, filmmakers, political leaders, rights activists and various others have issued an urgent statement questioning the manner in which Delhi Police has been conducting the probe into the Delhi riots cases.
The statement, released online on September 4, has expressed strong evidence of coerced ‘confessional’ statements and manufactured evidence, seeking assurances from the Delhi Police Commissioner to stop such practices and conduct a fair and impartial investigation to book the real culprits of the riots. Signatories among popular names include Aparna Sen (filmmaker), Jawahar Sircar (former Culture Secretary culture), Ramchandra Guha (historian), Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan (former Chairperson, Delhi Minority Commission), Margaret Alva (Former Governor), Wajahat Habibullah (former senior civil servants), Teesta Setalvad (rights activist), Aruna Vasudev (writer), Amitabha Basu (scientist) and others.
The collective statement of concerned citizens is a follow up to a letter sent by youth rights activist and JNU scholar, Umar Khalid to the Delhi Police Commissioner, Shri SN Shrivastava on September 1, with shocking evidence of the Delhi Police manufacturing evidence against him, through extorted statements. According to the signatories, the letter has glaring evidence revealing that a young man was interrogated by the Delhi Police (Special Cell) and a false confession against Umar Khalid, related to Delhi riots, was extracted and videotaped. The young man was threatened that he would be arrested under UAPA if he refused to which he submitted to the coercion. Further, in one of the charge-sheets at Dayalpur Police station, presented by the Delhi Police, there were 4 identical ‘confessional’ statements. There were 7 identical statements and 10 more identical statements in the Jaffrabad police station charge-sheet. In his letter, Umar Khalid had pointed out this pattern of coerced statements and false evidence, stating that it was “alarming.”
Against such repeated patterns of the indictment are witnessed in arrests related to anti-CAA protestors, the statement highlighted that over the past half-year, “the supporters and participants of these protests continue to be summoned by the police, harassed and subjected to long interrogations.” Several young activists and students also continue to languish in prison under the draconian UAPA for almost 6 months now, without any official charges framed against them. Despite inconsistencies and lies that have been rebutted publicly, “the Delhi Police has continued unrelentingly with the theory – not coincidentally propounded by the ruling dispensation – that the roots of the conspiracy of the riots lie in the protests against CAA,” the signatories wrote.
The letter states that on several occasions since December 2019, BJP leaders were seen inciting people to take the law into their own hands and making hate speeches. It would therefore have been reasonable to expect any fair investigative agency to probe the impact such speeches had on the gradual breakdown of law and order in Delhi subsequently leading to a complete collapse in parts of North-East Delhi between 23-26 February. The letter has resonated that the majority of targets of the Delhi violence – as pointed out even in the affidavit filed by the police in court – were Muslims, their livelihoods, properties and places of worship. But instead, the ‘investigation’ of the conspiracy behind the riots has chosen to target exactly those whom these hate speeches were made against – the participants and supporters of the protests against CAA/NRC/NPR.
The signatories have accused that on one occasion, the police has tried to build a ‘chronology’ of events as part of this conspiracy. In this version, the conspiracy of these riots began with the anti-CAA protests in Jamia Millia Islamia and Shaheen Bagh in mid-December. The chronology then goes on to detail other major anti-CAA protests in Delhi as all part of this conspiracy and the prominent voices as conspirators. “This ‘chronology’, however, is conspicuously silent on the actions and statements of leaders of the BJP and actual incidents of violence since December,” it outlined. Similarly, between December and February, BJP leaders like Kapil Mishra, Satya Pal Singh, Jagdish Pradhan, Nand Kishore Gujjar and Mohan Singh Bisht made several inciting statements asking people to shoot the ‘traitors, going as far as threatening in front of the DCP that the BJP supporters “will take the law into their own hands if the police does not clear the protestors.”
In this regard, the signatories have questioned whether the Delhi police do not consider these utterances as clearly an attempt to provoke violence and promote disaffection and divide between communities. In addition, during the Delhi violence in February, multiple videos emerged of persons associated with the ruling dispensation openly inciting and participating in the violence and carnage. In one such video, which was streamed live on Facebook from Maujpur, a woman named Ragini Tiwari is seen openly asking people to kill or die but her name finds no mention in the chronology of the ‘conspiracy’ put out by the Delhi Police.
The collective statement of concerned citizens has also made significant points in the way the Delhi Police has been approaching the probe. It has proven with available evidence that “the police has been coercing people it has summoned for questioning to give false statements.” The statement openly called this work of Delhi Police as “a desperate attempt by the police to buttress its conspiracy theory in the absence of any real credible evidence.” It even raised questions against the latest line of questioning by the police, accusing that “the Delhi Police has been grilling people on their conversations in some Whatsapp groups with hundreds of members,” calling it “ridiculous to believe that riots of this scale were conspired for several weeks in Whatsapp groups with hundreds of people and the police never got to know about them.”
The signatories have praised the nationwide anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protests, strongly supporting the massive protests whose nature was “peaceful, democratic and continuously spoke about the supremacy of the constitution and unity in diversity of the nation.” It acknowledged that “the protests were mostly led by women and saw spirited participation by all sections of the society,” and therefore the current witch-hunting of anti-CAA protesters is not only an attack on a few individuals but “sinister profiling of the democratic mass movement basically criminalizing our basic right to protest against the policies of the ruling dispensation of the day.”
The statement then spoke against the Centre for granting impunity to the supporters of the ruling dispensation, and indicated that this act of “clear incitement to violence seems to be a repeat of the impunity that the Delhi Police has provided over decades to the political leaders who were involved in inciting and participating in the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide.” Only that this time, “the Delhi Police seems to have gone one step ahead, and while providing impunity to the netas, it has started targeting the students and activists who have been critical of the regime.”
In the light of the above, the statement rejects the current probing approach of the Delhi Police, expressing that “this investigation is not into a conspiracy but the investigation itself is a conspiracy,” as it “erodes public faith in rule of law and chokes democratic dissent.” With the statement, the signatories have reiterated their opposition to CAA-NRC-NPR and assured that they “would continue peaceful and democratic protest against such anti-people laws.”
With regard to the conspiracy into the Delhi riots, the statement has demanded a court-monitored investigation or an inquiry into the current investigation under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952, by sitting/retired judge(s) of the higher judiciary.