New Delhi: Among the 53 lives extinguished when communal riots broke out in northeast Delhi were those of Mehtab, Jakir, Ashfaq and Jameel — four Muslim men who were killed in separate instances of mob violence on 25 February, 2020. One of them had stepped out to fetch milk, another was returning home from work, and a third had stepped out to offer namaz.
Mutilated and partially burnt bodies of the four men were recovered by the Delhi police, which initially registered a single FIR in this regard before lodging four separate cases. In three of these cases, police named four Hindu men and one Muslim man as the accused.
Last week, a Delhi court acquitted all five — Ashok Kumar, Ajay alias Monu, Subham Singh and Jitender Kumar of charges of murder and rioting, and Arif Khan alias Mota of charges of rioting.
Arif — who the police had accused of killing his neighbour Mehtab, whom he called uncle — was discharged by the court on account of the prosecution’s failure to present enough evidence for the charge of murder to be framed against him.
Moreover, according to sources, Jameel’s case remains unsolved, which begs the question: who killed him, Mehtab, Jakir and Ashfaq?
This is Part 4 of ThePrint’s series on the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, exploring how the five men accused in these cases lost their livelihoods, witnessed from behind bars their families plunge into debt and the ordeals of those who lost their loved ones in the riots.
According to data exclusively accessed by ThePrint, of the 53 murder cases lodged in connection with the riots, 14 remain unsolved. Chargesheets have been filed in the remaining 39 murder cases.
Jameel’s death, however, is one of the 14 cases unsolved.
As ThePrint reported in Part 1 of the series, a total of 757 cases were lodged in connection with the riots. Of these, a total of 63 cases — including all murder cases — were transferred to the Delhi Police Crime Branch. One of these cases, the first FIR lodged in the four murders, was cancelled.
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Hostile witnesses & blood stained clothes
While acquitting the five accused last week, a Delhi court noted that the prosecution’s “star witness” had turned hostile since his deposition before the court ran contrary to what he told the police in earlier statements.
The court also stated that the prosecution failed to prove that any of the accused were involved in the murders of Mehtab, Jakir and Ashfaq. The prosecution, the court added, also could not produce any evidence, even circumstantial in nature, to establish that the accused were part of the mob that went on rampage when and where the murders took place.
In four separate orders, the court also underlined that forensic examination could not determine that blood stained clothes recovered by the police — allegedly at the instance of the accused — belonged to the deceased.
The court also noted that the prosecution neither presented before it CCTV footage which it relied upon, nor was it able to establish that the footage in question had any connection to the four murders.
On 16 November, 2021, the court had charged the four Hindu men accused in the cases for murder and rioting, while Arif Khan alias Mota was charged only for rioting and related charges while being discharged for the murders of Mehtab, Jakir and Ashfaq on account of lack of common intention.
According to the police, the prosecution’s “star witness” Shashi Kant Kashyap alerted the police control room about the three murders around 6 pm on 25 February 2020. Investigators had submitted that Kashyap was “eyewitness” to the murders of Mehtab, Jakir and Ashfaq and that the accused were taken into custody after he identified them as part of the mob.
However, Kashyap could not identify any of the accused in court and denied making any such statement to the police. He only affirmed having made the PCR call.
Court documents accessed by ThePrint show that Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Videsh Singhal — who drafted the first charge sheet — had stated during cross-questioning by Arif’s counsel that Kashyap identified 10 rioters by name, in his statement recorded under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
However, the officer could not “find their complete particulars” and therefore did not “record statements of anyone regarding enquiry made in respect of aforesaid 5 persons”.
Arif’s counsel, advocate Abdul Gaffar, told ThePrint: “The investigating team obviously played a pick-and-choose game here. First, accuse a Muslim man of killing other Muslims during communal riots and then choose to ignore five other names given by their star witness who was later declared hostile. This points at serious lapses in the investigation.”
Surender Sharma, the prosecution’s second witness who was also declared hostile, denied making any statement to the police in which he may have identified Arif as one of the rioters. Sharma submitted in court that he had only seen Arif standing near the area where the mob went on rampage but never saw him taking part in any unlawful assembly.
“Witnesses turned hostile due to various reasons. The police have no control over that. The Covid-19 pandemic had a huge role to play in this. People didn’t want to speak to the police over fear of contracting the virus,” a source familiar with the cases told ThePrint.
‘There will never be any closure for us’
As for the families of the deceased, there is little hope of closure.
Four years since she lost her son, Mehtab’s mother Khusnuji has not been keeping well. She relocated to Loni recently and has been living there since.
On 25 February 2020, Mehtab, 24, had stepped out to buy milk at around 6 pm.
Mehtab’s sister-in-law Yasmin told ThePrint: “It’s been so long since Mehtab was killed. We don’t understand the legal process. For sometime we tried to keep track of what was happening but for how long? The family lost a young son. There is no going back from that. None of us will forget the bloodshed. Everyone in the family has lost faith in the system now.”
Ashfaq Hussain, aged 22, was an electrician by trade. He had gotten married just 11 days before he was killed while returning home from work.
Jakir Ahmad, aged 24, made a living by helping out his brothers with welding work. He was attacked after he stepped out to offer namaz at the Farooqia Masjid in Mustafabad, which was torched during the riots.
“My brother wasn’t just killed by an angry mob. There were men in uniform. They killed my brother,” Jakir’s brother Gulfam alleged, adding that the family has been trying to move on since.
“His wife got married again and took their two girls with her. It’s better that they are gone, there is nothing to look back at here. The only mistake my brother made was stepping out for namaz that day. No one listened to us when we said that the killers were men in uniform and never will,” he said.
“We have heard of the acquittals; that was bound to happen. But there will never be any closure for us.”
Also Read: Unending nightmares, bitterness — how Delhi riots changed a Muslim & a Hindu forever
Finding their way back into the world
One of the five men accused and later acquitted in the cases, 39-year-old Ashok Kumar said he spent many sleepless nights while behind bars.
“I was already worried about the case and then both my daughters, aged 15 and seven, were diagnosed with tuberculosis. The elder one had to undergo surgery. My mobile repair shop was also shut and my wife had to take out loans to make ends meet,” Kumar told ThePrint.
Following the closure of his mobile repair shop during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kumar took to selling vegetables in front of his house in Brijpuri. That is exactly what he was doing when Delhi police picked him up.
“They (police) planted everything, from clothes to other weapons, and said that they recovered all of it from me,” he claimed.
Subham Singh has a similar story to tell. “My life has regressed by several years now and I have to start from scratch,” said the 26-year-old who lost his T-shirt manufacturing business after his entanglement with the criminal justice system. “My father had to sell our lands to get my sister’s marriage.”
Arif Khan’s parents Babu Khan and Parbeen Khan still find it difficult to believe that the police arrested their 35-year-old son, a daily-wage labourer, for the murder of fellow Muslims, including their neighbour Mehtab.
“We have always lived close by and I would call Mehtab’s mother ammi (mother). How can anyone think that Arif would kill his own chacha (uncle) during the riots,” Parbeen told ThePrint.
Babu Khan, the father, added, “He (Arif) has some other police cases against him of theft etc. We think the police arrested him in the riots because of that and framed him.”
The other two accused and later acquitted — Jitender Kumar (32) and Ajay Singh (26) — are employed but struggling to find their way out into the world once again. “I have gone back four years in life. How does one compensate for that,” said Jitender, who works as a helper in a wine shop.
According to Ashok Kumar, “Once you come out of jail, the world sees you differently. How do you go and tell everyone that you have been acquitted? For the common people, you are still a murderer and a rioter.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: 2020 riots changing Delhi. Muslims, Hindus leaving old neighbourhoods, moving to ghettos