[Delhi riots] Delhi High Court to hear from Feb 8 petitions against politicians, Delhi Police

The Delhi High Court will start hearing a batch of petitions demanding registration of first information reports (FIRs) against several politicians for their role in instigating the Delhi riots from Tuesday [Shaikh Mujtaba Farooq and Ors v Union of India and Ors].

The petitions also seek a Special Investigating Team (SIT) inquiry into the role of the Delhi Police in dealing with the riots where over 50 people died.

A Division Bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup Jairam Bhambhani will hear the matters on a periodic basis.

This comes after the Supreme Court direction in December asked the Delhi High Court to deal with these matters as expeditiously as possible and preferably within three months.

On Friday, the Bench noted that the two months had already passed since the Supreme Court direction and even though it was euphemistically put, the apex court’s “wish is their command”.

The judges noted that while most of the prayers in the petitions sought various reliefs related to the northeast Delhi riots, some concerned the violence in Jamia Millia Islamia as well.

Therefore, it the prayers have to be collated so that the Court can deal with these based on issues, the bench said.

“Just collate all the prayers in all of these petitions so that we can go through those at the very inception and make a determination as to which are the live ones and which are rendered infructuous,” the Court asked the counsel.

There are half a dozen petitions before the Delhi High Court related to the February 2020 riots. Most of these have sought registration of FIR against BJP leaders Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur and Pravesh Sahib Singh Verma and an SIT investigation into the Delhi Police’s role in the violence.

However, the plea by activist Ajay Gautam seeks an NIA inquiry into the genesis of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)/National Register of Citizen (NRC) as well the alleged funding behind them.

He has sought the registration of FIRs against leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Salman Khurshid, Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Asaduddin Owaisi and several others for their alleged role in the riots.