After a hiatus of many months in the matter connected to the Northeast Delhi riots, the Delhi High Court Friday said it will hear the Public Interest Litigations seeking SIT investigation into the violence and action against various political leaders for alleged hate speeches from February 8. Action against police officials for allegedly being complicit in the riots is also being sought by the petitioners.
The division bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani, to which the matter was transferred last week from the division bench headed by Chief Justice D N Patel, asked the counsel to collate the prayers in the petitions to allow it make a determination that which of the reliefs sought still survive and which have become infructuous over time.
“The first step would be to figure out which of the prayers in which of the petition survive. We don’t want to flog a dead horse. If something is already over, done with, on the rails then we are not to interfere in that,” said the court, adding the question on the scope of a PIL in a criminal matter will also need to be dealt with.
After hearing a petition filed by three riot victims, the Supreme Court on December 17 asked the High Court to decide the matter, particularly the one seeking registration of a case against BJP leaders Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur and others, expeditiously, preferably in three months.
The PILs, which had been filed before the court during the riots and soon after, have remained in cold storage with no major proceedings taking place due to repeated adjournments owing to the non-sitting of the previous bench. On orders of the court, police have however filed reports apprising it about the status of investigation and trial in FIRs registered to probe the incidents of violence.
Since October 2021, police have filed chargesheets in only six cases registered in connection with the riots of 2020 even as the investigation continues to remain pending in more than 50 per cent of the total 758 FIRs, the status reports filed by police reveal. Even where the police have already filed chargehseets and declared some probes completed, the supplementary investigation, according to the agency, remains pending in more than 64 per cent of those cases.
One of the petitions before the court also seeks action against various leaders of the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party for their alleged hate speeches. One of the PILs also seeks an NIA probe into the UAPA case to examine the alleged “anti-national forces” behind the anti-CAA protests.