Senior Delhi police officers, BJP leaders named in Delhi riots complaints; no FIR registered

It has become evident that arrests and cases being pursued by the Delhi Police in the aftermath of the pogrom in north-east Delhi are politically motivated. Several senior police officers, BJP leader Kapil Mishra and other saffron party leaders have been named by many complainants, but no action has been taken against them.

According to news reports in The Caravan, several complaints of violence, intimidation filed by residents of north-east Delhi have been buried and are unlikely to be followed upon by the police. Several of the complaints were sent to the prime minister’s office, the ministry of home affairs, the Delhi Lieutenant Governor’s office and multiple police stations and many of them bear multiple receiving stamps.

It was found that even though there were accusations against Kapil Mishra and the other BJP leaders, no action was taken against any of them. A chargesheet filed by the police in the murder case of head constable Rattan Lal during the pogrom in north-east Delhi includes the statement of a witness who reportedly said that he had heard people at an anti-CAA protest site shout that an awning had been “set on fire by Kapil Mishra’s people”, said a media report.

Several residents of north-east Delhi had filed complaints on the violence on February 24 and most of their complaints were not registered as FIRs. The complaints contained accusations ranging from leading a mob, brandishing a gun, inciting violence, to eyewitnesses recounting murder, to police officials burning and looting a mosque and directing their subordinates to send the money to a BJP parliamentarian. Several of these complaints were filed in February and March, but even though the Delhi Police is mandated by law to register a first information report, it hasn’t done so even for a single complaint.

One of the complainants, Mohammad Jami Rizvi, had stated that when he stepped out on February 24, he saw more than 10 tilak-sporting people brandishing arms and weapons shouting, ‘Kapil Mishra, we are with you’. They were shouting both anti-Muslim and anti-Dalit slogans. Rizvi saw Kapil Mishra arrive and warning people of the area to vacate. Mishra threatened people that if they didn’t vacate, violence would ensue. Rizvi said that as soon as Mishra said this, the violence against protestors began.

Another complainant wrote that she saw three senior officials in Chand Bagh—Anuj Sharma, an ACP at the Gokulpuripolice station, Tarkeshwar Singh, who was the SHO of Dayalpur police station at the time, and RS Meena, the SHO of Bhajanpura police station—fire at and kill protesters, reported The Caravan.

Most of the complaints were filed at a help desk at a relief camp for displaced residents set up at Mustafabad’s Eidgah grounds. Many complaints noted that the police had refused to accept their complaints when they tried to register a case at the station directly. At the help desk, each complaint received the stamp of the office or station that exercised jurisdiction over the matter.

The DCP of north-east Delhi Ved Prakash Surya is an accused in several of these complaints as he stood idle next to Mishra on February 23 even as the BJP leader threatened to clear the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Two complaints point out that Surya went through the streets of Kardampuri on February 23 warning protesters to end their anti-CAA agitations.

It is not only Surya, at least one deputy commissioner, two additional commissioners and two station house officers of the Delhi Police participated in unprovoked firing, arson and looting during the violence in late February, have been named in the complaints filed by eyewitnesses.

Three complainants from Chand Bagh, in north-east Delhi, accused senior police officials of attacking the protesters on February 24. They stated that the police acted in cahoots with the local violent mob. A complainant stated that the SHO, the ACP, the DCP and several other police personnel were all carrying two guns each. According to eyewitness accounts, these police officers threatened the women at the anti-CAA protests stating that they would be freed from their lives itself. According to the complainants, the police burnt down the tent where the anti-CAA protests were held, destroyed posters of Babasaheb Ambedkar, Savitri Bai Phule, Bhagat Singh and Ashfaqulla Khan.

Several of the women complainants wrote about the sexual nature of the violence. Imrana Parveen wrote in her complaint that the owner of Mohan Nursing Home, which is in the area,came to the site with his staff and his associates in cars and told them to pick up all the young women. But, they were saved by some men who had ran to help them. According to the complaint, some of those who rushed to help them were shot at from the terrace of Mohan Nursing Home.

Another Chand Bagh resident, Sabir Ali, had identified the police officers who attacked in the women in his March 16 complaint, stated the report. He was referring to RS Meena, the Bhajanpura SHO, and Tarkeshwar Singh, the DayalpurSHO at the time. In his complaint, he wrote that the Delhi Police Crime Branch intervened in his case. They took away his son’s phone which had several recordings of the police violence. The police then took his son away under the pretext of lodging the FIR, but he has released only the next day and the police kept his phone. They made his son sign blank papers and the phone has not been returned yet, stated the report.

Despite several reports stating that the Muslim neighbourhoods in north-east Delhi were targeted and the police were seen chanting Hindutva slogans such as “Jai Shri Ram”, not a single case has been filed against these police officers for the violence.