A Delhi court has acquitted five men accused of rioting and attempting to murder a man during the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, saying the investigating agency appeared to have tried to "fill the lacuna" in the case and failed to establish their presence at the spot where the victim was injured.
Additional Sessions Judge Sameer Bajpai was hearing a case against five men -- Raj Kumar, Deepak Tomar, Gurmeet Singh, Gaurav and Vikram -- accused of rioting, rioting with deadly weapons, unlawful assembly, attempt to murder and common intention under the IPC. The proceedings against Vikram had already been abated by the court on July 15 after his death.
In an order dated October 14, the court said, "The court must take note of the fact that the FIR in the present case was registered three days after the incident… surprisingly, the statements of Head Constables Sonu and Rafiq were recorded at a much later stage, which shows that the investigating agency tried to fill the lacuna in order to make out a case and resolve the same."
The court said the prosecution's case rested primarily on the identification of the accused through CCTV footage and photographs, which constituted weak evidence, particularly as the police witness was not previously acquainted with them.
The case pertained to an incident on February 25, 2020 near Kardampuri Puliya, where a man named Rizwan sustained a bullet injury to his head amid the violence.
Advocates Shakeel Ahmad and Shawed Jameel, the counsels representing accused Raj Kamal, Gaurav and Gurmeet Singh, submitted that the prosecution's case was false and the accused were not present at the spot at the time of the incident.
They argued that the injured man, Rizwan, and other public witnesses neither named nor identified the accused in their statements or court testimony.
The court noted that even in a supplementary statement recorded around seven months later, he did not name them but only identified five persons allegedly present at the spot after being shown photographs.
During his testimony in court, Rizwan did not support the prosecution's claim regarding the identification of the accused through photographs.
The court also noted that the statements of two other public witnesses, Rizwan's brother Sartaj and his friend Kasim, did not help establish the accused persons' involvement.
"The weakness of the evidence becomes more significant where the victim and the other public witnesses never identified or named the accused persons," the judge said.
The court also questioned the reliability of the CCTV footage, noting that the investigating officers could not specify the locations of the cameras from which it was obtained. The prosecution had also failed to formally prove the relevant footage.
"Clearly, the second deposition is very weak and cannot match the first deposition," the court said, referring to the police witness identifying the accused in CCTV footage rather than testifying that he had seen them participating in the riots.
The court concluded that the prosecution had failed to prove that the accused were present at the spot, part of an unlawful assembly or involved in the offences alleged against them.