Opposition Leaders call on President Ramnath Kovind, demand judicial probe in Delhi riots

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Five MPs from Opposition parties giving memorandum to President Ramnath Kovind, seeking a judicial probe in Delhi riots.

Syed Khalique Ahmed | India Tomorrow

NEW DELHI—Five leaders from opposition parties on Thursday called on President Ramnath Kovind and submitted a memorandum seeking a judicial probe into the northeast Delhi riots under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952, headed by either a sitting or a retired judge.

The leaders in the delegation included D. Raja of CPI, Sitaram Yechury of CPI(M), Ahmed Patel of the Congress, Ms. Kanimozhi of DMK and Manoj Jha of RJD.

Stating that “the ongoing probe by the Delhi police does not inspire confidence”, the MPs alleged that “the entire investigations appears to be aimed at arriving at a pre-meditated theory about a conspiracy propounded by the Home Minister in Lok Sabha in March 2020, before any investigation had even begun into the riots”.

They also raised questions about the “role of police during the violence and also the manner in which the police is harassing and attempting to falsely implicate youths and activists who took part in the anti-CAA/NRC/NPR movements as the perpetrators of violence”.

Stating that political leaders like Sitaram Yechury and several activists, intellectuals and academicians are now being “falsely implicated” under a “manufactured conspiracy theory”, the opposition leaders said that “this is a disturbing trend that raises serious questions over the manner of such investigations”.

The opposition leaders, in their memorandum, said that “while Delhi police has turned a blind eye towards the role of its own personnel and BJP leaders-Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma, Satya Pal Singh, Jagdish Pradhan, Nand Kishore Gujjar and Mohan Singh Bisht- in the violence, the probe appears to be pursuing a line of inquiry criminalizing the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and portraying them as a conspiracy which resulted in riots in Delhi”.

“The chronology described in the chargesheets chronicle the various sit-ins in Delhi and speeches by social activists as though each of these was a build up towards the riots”, the memorandum goes on to say.

They said that many people filed complaints against the BJP leaders, including a minister raising slogans to “shoot the traitors”, accusing them of participating in or orchestrating the violence but no action had so far been taken against them by the police.

They pointed out that serious questions about “impartiality of the probe” has arisen after a senior police official directing the investigators to take “due care and precaution” while making arrest of Hindu youths.

Regarding the role of police in the violence, they have referred to several videos available on the social media, including beating of injured Muslim youths by the police and forcing them to sing the National Anthem which resulted in the death of a young boy Faizan.

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