The Delhi police was reprimanded by the court of law over vigilance inquiry report on Monday (March 1, 2021). The report was filed by Police itself with respect to the case linked to the riots in Delhi and a Jamia Milia Islamia student, Asif Iqbal Tanha was thereby arrested in May. The student alleged a media trial. He went on to add that his confessional statements were leaked in the media.
All of this started last year with the introduction of the controversial Citizenship Law which makes religion as a test of citizenship for the first time. More than 50 people were killed during clashes between those choosing to support and oppose the same law.
Mr. Tanha was a member of the Students Islamic Organisation along with being a part of Jamia Coordination Committee which headed the protest against the same citizenship law.
Justice Mukesh Gupta said, "This vigilance inquiry is even worse than what they do in an ordinary inquiry in a petty theft case. These are not files sent through couriers, these are hand-held files.” Along with this, the court chided the police with phrases like, “useless piece of paper,” and “half baked” over the vigilance report.
On the leak of the confessional statement of the student, he said that he was misrepresented for the same and it is not admissible in the court. As the court questioned the Delhi Police over the leak of report, it responded by saying that the report was shared only with state government and the Home Ministry.
The court chose sharp words to say, "These are senior IAS officers. Where did you do the inquiry, who did you inquire of? Where were the files sent? Who took them to the Delhi government and MHA and who brought them back... there is nothing in the report. It is completely silent. These are not documents lying on road."
The judge further said, “The vigilance inquiry report says that the allegations were unsubstantiated. No, the allegations were substantiated. You were to find out who did it."
The counsel for the Petitioner, Siddharth Aggarwal claimed that the only agenda of the news channel was to “malign” him.
The court also said, “It was not just undesirable, it was prejudicial to the accused and these things need to be controlled for fairness to the accused and purity of the investigation," when Delhi Police claim to be “equally aggrieved” and it called the leakage of the information “undesirable.”
Lastly, Delhi Police’s Special Commissioner of Vigilance has been asked by the court to attend the next hearing on Friday (March 5, 2021).
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