A Delhi court has acquitted seven men of murder and other serious charges in a case linked to the fatal assault on a man during the 2020 Delhi riots, news agency Press Trust of India reported. The court, however, convicted them of disobeying a prohibitory order.
The court said it would be unsafe to hold the accused guilty of the fatal assault solely on the testimony of a police witness without supporting evidence. It acquitted them of charges including murder, rioting with deadly weapons and promoting enmity.
Additional Sessions Judge Parveen Singh convicted Kuldeep Singh, Harjeet Singh alias Happy, Rahul alias Ajay, Sachin Rastogi, Bharat Bhushan alias Lucky, Sandeep alias Sanjeev and Dharmender alias Dham under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code for violating a prohibitory order imposed under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
In the October 15 order, the court said, "There is no evidence through the testimonies of any of the witnesses that any of the accused was armed with any deadly weapon or any weapon whatsoever."
The case relates to the assault on Babbu, an auto-rickshaw driver, at Khajuri Chowk on February 25, 2020. He died at GTB Hospital two days later.
According to PTI, the prosecution relied on the testimony of Assistant Sub-Inspector Anil Kumar, who claimed to have witnessed the assault. However, other witnesses presented as eyewitnesses did not support the prosecution's case.
The court also found that the video footage relied upon by the prosecution was of poor quality and that the faces of the people in it could not be identified. It said identifying a person in the footage with the naked eye was "completely impossible".
"The video was of a very poor quality and from that video, no faces could be made out, and that the identification by the naked eye of any individual in that video was completely impossible," the judge said.
The judge observed that the prosecution had failed to establish that the person seen being beaten in the video was Babbu or that the accused were responsible for the fatal assault.
Sachin Gupta alias Mopi, another accused in the case, was acquitted of all charges after being given the benefit of doubt. The court listed the matter for hearing arguments on the sentence for the seven men convicted of violating the prohibitory order at a later date.
In summary, the court cleared the accused of charges related to Babbu's fatal assault because of insufficient supporting evidence, while holding seven of them guilty of disobeying the prohibitory order.
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