A Delhi court on Wednesday stayed a magistrate’s order to the police to carry out further investigation against Bharatiya Janata Party leader and state law minister Kapil Mishra for his alleged involvement in the violence that broke out in the city in February 2020, Bar and Bench reported.

Additional Sessions Judge Kaweri Baweja stayed the order till the next date of hearing on April 21.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasiya had on April 1 held that there was enough material to warrant further investigation into whether Mishra committed a cognisable offence in connection with the 2020 violence. The Delhi Police filed a revision petition against the order.

Cognisable offences under Indian law are serious crimes that threaten public safety or order. The police can register a case and make arrests for such crimes without court approval.

The police argued that the additional chief judicial magistrate erred by ordering further investigation even though the complainant had demanded that a first information report be registered, Live Law reported. It also contended that the magistrate encroached on the jurisdiction of the special court hearing cases related to the riots, despite knowing that a case under the Unlawful Activities Act was pending.

The complaint against Mishra was filed by a man named Mohammed Ilyas.

Ilyas was among the handful of citizens who approached the courts after police refused to register their complaints and file an FIR against Mishra for his alleged involvement in the riots that engulfed North East Delhi in February 2020.

Fifty-three people died in violence that erupted in Delhi at the time. The majority of them were Muslims.

Ilyas previously told Scroll that he had approached the police three times asking for a case to be registered against Mishra, but was told that they would register his complaint only against unspecified “rioters”.

After the April 1 order, he told Scroll that he was happy, but did not expect that the police would file a first information report against the BJP leader.

Ilyas claims that on February 23, 2020, he saw Mishra and his associates block a road at Kardam Puri, just across his residence in Yamuna Vihar, and break carts belonging to Muslims and Dalits. He alleges that police officers were with Mishra during this time but did not stop him.

Also read: The futile, five-year struggle to lodge an FIR against Kapil Mishra