A sessions court last week acquitted 12 people accused of murdering a man named Hashim Ali during the February 2020 north-east Delhi riots.
Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala observed in the acquittal order dated April 30 that in the name of circumstantial evidence, the “prosecution could show only fragments and pieces of evidence”.
The case stems from the recovery of three bodies from a drain in north-east Delhi’s Gokalpuri on February 27, 2020. One of them was identified as Ali, who had been reported missing at the Gokalpuri police station. An eyewitness reported seeing the 12 carrying stones, sticks, swords, and iron rods and shouting religious slogans.
The prosecution had accused Lokesh Solanki, Pankaj Sharma, Ankit Chaudhary, Prince, Jatin Sharma, Himanshu Thakur, Vivek Panchal, Rishabh Chaudhary, Sumit Chaudhary, Tinku Arora, Sandeep, and Sahil of killing nine Muslim persons after ascertaining their identities.
The court noted that the evidence shared by the prosecution did not support its theory that Ali was intercepted by Mr. Solanki and others. It also rejected the evidence in the form of WhatsApp chats of a group named ‘Kattar Hindu Ekta’, of which Mr. Solanki and the others were members, noting that the police had relied on the same chats in cases pertaining to the nine other killings.
“The prosecution also relied on the recovery of a stick each from Himanshu, Jatin and Vivek in other cases. Those sticks were sent to the GTB Hospital Forensics Department. The board of doctors were of the opinion that the injuries on the body of Hashim could be caused by those sticks. However, at the same time, nothing more was found on any of those sticks, so as to say that the same sticks were used to inflict the injuries,” the judge added.
This story was originally published in thehindu.com.
