Delhi violence: Police investigation in many cases ‘very poor’, says court
A sessions court judge observed that police had filed half-baked chargesheets in many cases and investigating officers have not been appearing in courts.
A Delhi court has observed that police investigation in many cases related to the violence in Delhi in February 2020 has been “very poor”, PTI reported on Sunday. The court has asked commissioner of the Delhi Police to take “remedial steps” in the matter.
Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Yadav made the observations on Saturday while framing charges against a person identified as Ashraf Ali for allegedly attacking police personnel with acid, glass bottles and bricks during the violence on February 25, 2020.
Yadav expressed disappointment about the standard of investigation in cases related to the violence and observed that investigating officers have not been appearing in courts in most of the matters.
“This case is a glaring example, wherein victims are police personnel itself, yet the IO [investigating officer] did not bother to collect the sample of acid and to have its chemical analysis,” the judge said in his order. “The IO has further not bothered to collect the opinion about the nature of injuries.”
Yadav also noted that in several cases, the police have not bothered to take the investigation to a logical end after filing half-baked chargesheets. Due to this, those accused in multiple cases continued to languish in jails, the judge said.
He said that the police have not been briefing public prosecutors for arguments in many cases. Instead, they were mailing a copy of the chargesheet to the prosecutors on the morning of the cases’ hearing.
Last month too, Yadav had made similar observations about the Delhi Police’s investigation in a case related to the February 2020 violence.
While hearing the case of Delhi resident Mohammad Nasir, who had filed a complaint about suffering a gunshot injury during the violence, Yadav had said that the investigation carried out in the matter was “callous and farcical”.
He had also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the Delhi Police.
Clashes had broken out between the supporters of the Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it between February 23 and 26 in North East Delhi, killing 53 people and injuring hundreds. The police were accused of either inaction or complicity in some instances of violence, mostly in Muslim neighbourhoods. The violence was the worst Delhi saw since the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.