A Delhi court has stayed an order directing the registration of a first information report against the station house officer of Jyoti Nagar police station in North East Delhi, for allegedly assaulting Muslim men and forcing them to sing the national anthem and Vande Mataram during communal riots in the capital in 2020.

On February 1, Additional Sessions Judge Sameer Bajpai of the Karkardooma court placed an interim stay on the January 18 order of Judicial Magistrate Udbhav Kumar Jain, which had directed police to file an FIR against Salender Tomar, the station house officer, under Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings (295A), voluntarily causing hurt (323), wrongful confinement (342) and criminal intimidation (506).

Bajpai was hearing Tomar’s revision plea.

The order was passed without notice to the complainant, Mohd Waseem, or his lawyer, Mehmood Pracha, who discovered it on Monday evening while checking the case status online.

“The order came as a great surprise to us,” Pracha told Scroll. “The court should have heard us before passing its order.”

Waseem had filed an application for the registration of an FIR against Tomar before the magistrate’s court in 2020.

Waseem, who was a minor at the time, had alleged that on February 24, 2020, he was among a group of Muslim men detained and beaten by the police while being forced to sing patriotic songs and chant “Jai shri Ram”.

His complaint referenced a viral video of the incident and linked the case to the death of 23-year-old Faizan, who was seen in the same video and later died allegedly due to custodial torture. The Delhi High Court transferred the investigation of Faizan’s death to the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2024.

Tomar’s counsel argued that the magistrate’s order was illegal and amounted to double jeopardy, as an FIR had already been registered for the same incident, in which Waseem was a witness. They also contended that under Indian law, no FIR could be filed without prior government sanction when a police officer is accused of acts committed in the line of duty.

The Delhi High Court had also directed the CBI to investigate police officers’ roles in the case. The sessions court noted that enforcing the magistrate’s order before hearing Tomar’s revision plea would defeat the purpose of the petition.

The matter will next be heard on April 17.