A Delhi court has torn apart a police case that accused six men of torching property near Azizia Masjid during the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, declaring the evidence a web of fabrication.
Additional Sessions Judge Praveen Singh acquitted all six—Ishu Gupta, Prem Prakash, Raj Kumar, Manish Sharma, Rahul, and Amit—after concluding that the investigation was riddled with falsehoods and procedural lapses.
The ruling minced no words: the so-called eyewitness testimony was “completely unreliable,” and the investigating officer appeared to have “padded” the record with manufactured material just to “work out” the case.
The court observed that despite glaring contradictions in the file, senior officers signed off on the charges without scrutiny. Even the arrests and identification process raised alarms, with the judge questioning why photographic identification was used when the accused were already in custody and a judicial test identification parade could have been done.
Calling it a serious trampling of rights, the court stressed that such practices erode public faith in law enforcement. A copy of the judgment has been sent to the Commissioner of Police with a direction to consider remedial steps.
In the end, the six men walked free, but the judgment leaves the Delhi Police with hard questions about accountability in riot-related investigations.
