Missing for nine years, where is JNU student Najeeb Ahmed?

Indian Express

2 days ago

On October 15, 2016, Najeeb Ahmed, a first-year student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, went missing. The 27-year-old, an MSc student at the School of Biotechnology, had allegedly gotten into a scuffle with some ABVP members before this.
Nine years on, there is still no sign of him.
At the time, Najeeb's mother had moved court, which later directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the case.
In 2018, unable to make headway and finding no further evidence, the CBI filed a closure report.
On June 5 this year, Delhi's Rouse Avenue Court is likely to decide whether it will accept or decline the report.
The case had sparked massive protests outside the JNU Vice-Chancellor's office in 2016; various student wings blamed the V-C for allegedly not acting decisively in the matter. In the years since, Najeeb's mother, Fatima Naees, has made fervent appeals to find her son.
The Delhi Police had filed an FIR under Section 365 of the Indian Penal Code (kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person) and had also announced a reward of Rs 50,000 for any information on the student. Along with this, they had identified nine people as suspects.
In November 2016, dissatisfied with the efforts of the police, Naees decided to approach the Delhi High Court with a habeas corpus writ petition seeking his production. Claiming that the police's efforts were 'slow, misdirected and subjective', she had prayed for a court-monitored SIT (Special Investigation Team) to take over the case from the Delhi Police.
As part of its probe, the police had sent wireless messages to the SSPs of all districts in the country on the day Najeeb went missing. They had also uploaded his details on ZIPNET, a tool for inter-state police coordination, especially to track missing persons. It also sent four teams along various routes, including Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Moradabad and Rampur in search of him. CCTV footage from Metro stations was also examined.
On December 19 and 20 that year, 560 police officers also searched 1,019 acres of the JNU campus — including academic blocks, hostel complexes, water tanks and septic tanks.
All these attempts eventually turned out to be futile.
Six months later, on May 16, 2017, the High Court passed the case to the CBI.
The CBI's investigation could also not reach a conclusion. On October 16, 2017, the Delhi High Court pulled up the central agency, stating that it wasn't showing the intent to find Najeeb. The High Court had also directed a forensic laboratory in Chandigarh to examine the mobile phones of the nine suspects.
On May 11, 2018, the CBI had told the court that it found no evidence that there was any crime committed against Najeeb based on the findings of the lab.
Three months later, the agency told the High Court that it had decided to file a closure report in the case since it had probed all angles and had still found nothing against the suspects. Of the nine phones sent to the lab in Chandigarh, two could not be analysed since they were not in a working condition.
On April 2019, a Delhi court directed the CBI to give copies of all statements and documents related to the closure report to Najeeb's mother within two weeks. Naees had filed a protest petition against the CBI's closure report.
The CBI's investigation involved questioning 26 persons, including JNU officials, staff, friends, and colleagues. It also involved examining mortuaries in 12 cities, along with scrutinising railway records for a year.
As per the 8th status report filed by the central probe agency, Interpol was also roped in to help find Najeeb. The reward for finding him was also raised to Rs 10 lakh.
Senior Advocate Colin Gonsalves, who represented Naees in the High Court, had argued that the CBI wasted a lot of time in tracing Najeeb. 'The one thing they should have done is custodial interrogation of the accused persons. Najeeb was getting threats a day before he disappeared. The fact that they failed to do this shows a complete mockery of the system,' he told The Indian Express.
In an order dated October 8, 2018, Delhi High Court Justice S Muralidhar had said: 'In the present case, however, this court did accept the plea of the petitioner at the first instance and directed the investigation to be undertaken by the CBI. This court is, however, for reasons discussed hereafter, not persuaded that the CBI is tardy and slow in the investigation or that it has not taken steps that are required to be taken in the matter.'
Recently, the CBI told Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Jyoti Maheshwari that they couldn't record the statement of the doctor at Safdarjung Hospital, where Najeeb was allegedly rushed after being injured in the scuffle, because no document pertaining to his visit existed.
The CBI also alleged that he went back to the hostel without getting a medico-legal case report prepared.
Meanwhile, in an order dated April 7, 2025, the court referred to Najeeb as 'deceased' instead of 'injured'. A few days later, they called it an 'inadvertent error' in a submission in court.
Till date, no one knows where Najeeb is.