Opposition leaders on Thursday submitted a memorandum to President Ram Nath Kovind, expressing concern about the manner in which the Delhi Police is investigating the riots that broke out in the capital in February this year. The leaders claimed that the police were falsely implicating anti-CAA activists.
The leaders urged the President to call upon the Central government to institute an inquiry into the investigation by the Delhi Police under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952, headed by a sitting or retired judge.
The opposition delegation, which included Ahmed Patel of the Congress, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, DMK MP Kanimozhi, CPI leader D. Raja and RJD's Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha, said in the memorandum that there were serious questions about the role played by the Delhi Police itself during the violence. They said the police were “...harassing and attempting to falsely implicate activists and young people who took part in the anti-CAA/NRC/NPR movements as the perpetrators of violence.”
They said the “manufactured conspiracy” has now begun to falsely implicate political leaders. In this context, they said the name of Yechury, a parliamentarian of long-standing repute, and also names of well-known intellectuals, academicians and activists have now surfaced in material put out in the public domain.
“There are several publicly documented accounts and videos of police being complicit in the violence, directing mobs pelting stones or looking the other way when mobs were indulging in violence. During the violence, disturbing videos emerged showing uniformed cops assaulting young men lying injured on the road and forcing them to sing the national anthem while repeatedly beating them with lathis,” the memorandum said.
The leaders questioned the “notable silence” in the chargesheets on the role of leaders associated with the BJP, who they said gave inflammatory speeches. This, they said, raises serious concern about the impartiality of the probe.
“In fact, even when people have courageously filed complaints against BJP leaders—Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma, Satya Pal Singh, Jagdish Pradhan, Nand Kishore Gujjar and Mohan Singh Bisht—accusing them of participating in or orchestrating the violence, there has been no action by the Delhi Police,” they said.
They claimed that the probe appears to be pursuing a line of inquiry criminalising the protests against the CAA and portraying them as a conspiracy that resulted in the riots in Delhi.
They said a credible and unbiased probe is crucial to restore public trust in the law and order machinery of the state. “The investigation cannot be allowed to become a fishing and roving expedition aimed at causing a chilling effect on dissent and protest in the country,” they said.