12 men accused of murder during 2020 riots acquitted

Time of India

19 hours ago

New Delhi: A court acquitted 12 people accused of killing a youth during the 2020 riots in northeast Delhi, citing a lack of evidence and contradictions in the statements of witnesses.
The court of additional sessions judge Pulastya Pramachala said on June 5 that the investigating agency failed to prove the charges of murder, rioting, criminal conspiracy to murder and destruction of evidence against the accused.
According to the prosecution, 12 men who were part of a rioting mob on Feb 25, 2020, killed Aas Mohammad and threw him in the drain at Bhagirathi Vihar/Johripur pulia. He was coming on foot from the Loni border side in Ghaziabad.
The chargesheet was filed on the charges of murder along with rioting, arson, criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity between different religious groups and statements conducing to public mischief under Indian Penal Code.
The prosecution also alleged that as per the chats of a WhatsApp group, the accused and their associates conspired to teach Muslims a lesson for attacking the Hindus. They equipped themselves with lathis, dandas, sticks, etc.,
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and started roaming in the area to vandalise/burn properties. They further resolved to kill Muslims, whoever came before them, the prosecution alleged.
The court gave the benefit of doubt to all accused. "In the absence of some concrete evidence laying down the foundation, no presumption can be raised that some persons identified as part of some mob at some place at some other time period would also have been part of a mob, and such mob was involved in the incident of murder of Aas Mohammad," the judge noted in the 62-page judgment.
The acquitted people are Lokesh Kumar Solanki, Pankaj Sharma, Sumit Chaudhary, Ankit Chaudhary, Prince, Rishabh Chaudhary, Jatin Sharma, Vivek Panchal, Himanshu Thakur, Tinku Arora, Sandeep Thakur and Sahil alias Babu. However, the court convicted Solanki of promoting enmity, doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony and statements conducing to public mischief for inciting communal violence during the riots.
"Accused Lokesh was a member of this group since the beginning. Some of the messages posted by him in this group are already reproduced in this judgment. I have gone through the messages posted in this group by different members. As the name suggests, the central focus of messages in this group has been to unite the persons from the Hindu community. However, on that pretext, messages started pouring in to the effect of abusing the Muslims.
Messages were posted to call upon the members to assemble together, so as to counter the Muslims," the judge said.
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