A Delhi court on Tuesday pulled up the police after they said they were not able to file a chargesheet in a case related to the communal violence in the capital city in 2020 due to the preparations for the G20 summit, Live Law reported.

Clashes had broken out between supporters of the Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it in February 2020 in North East Delhi, killing at least 53 persons and injuring hundreds. Most of those killed in the violence were Muslims.

On Tuesday, a sessions court in Delhi was hearing a case filed on a woman’s complaint who said that her house had been vandalised by a mob. Ten other cases were clubbed after the Delhi Police received similar complaints.

On July 20, the station house officer and the investigating officer of the city’s Khajuri Khas police station had sought time from the court to file a supplementary chargesheet in the matter, according to Live Law.

However, at Tuesday’s hearing, Special Public Prosecutor Naresh Kumar Gaur said that the station house office was busy in the Delhi High Court and the investigating officer was “beyond contact” being busy with the G20 Summit.

The summit was held in Delhi on September 9 and September 10.

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Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala took exception to this, saying that being busy with the summit was not a good enough reason for the delay in filing the chargesheet.

“It is never expected that police organisation will be at ease at any point of time, keeping in view the peculiar nature of their job,” the judge observed. “Law and order management and the investigation of a case have to be taken along by the police agency by striking a balance.”

The case will next be taken up on October 6.

In the past too, Justice Pramachala has pulled up the Delhi Police for irregularities in investigation of cases related to the 2020 riots.

In two cases that came up for hearing in the last week of August, the judge had criticised the police for “befooling the court” and maintaining “double standards”. Earlier, he had acquitted a Muslim man observing that the police had made “artificial statements” against him.