On being told that the Court has directed the CBI to investigate Faizan’s case and bring the guilty to book, his mother expressed the hope that justice may finally be served.
In February 2020, more than 50 people died, many more were injured and hundreds affected in one of the worst communal riots in India’s national capital in decades. The Delhi Police invited criticism, not just for lacking the will to stem the violence — the brunt of which was borne by the minorities — but some cops were also accused of abetting mobs that had a free run of the city for at least four days. A Fact-Finding Committee of the Delhi Minorities Commission found “that victims themselves were arrested, especially when they filed or attempted to file complaints”. Now, the Delhi High Court has called out some of the custodians of law for being “driven by bigoted mindsets”. The Court took note of two online videos that had gone viral when the riots were raging. They show policemen raining blows on Faizan, a resident of northeast Delhi, humiliating him and forcing him to sing Vande Mataram and the national anthem.
The Court was responding to a petition by Faizan’s mother, who had alleged that the cops detained the 23-year old illegally, denied him medical care, resulting in his death at a hospital. Its 38-page order is a stinging indictment of the Delhi Police’s “tardy” probe into allegations against its own personnel. Particularly resonant are its words of outrage: “The element of abomination gets aggravated if a hate crime is committed by a person in uniform”. This observation is of a piece with several studies, including those by the police itself. For instance, a 2014 report by the then DGs of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu noted that minorities view police as partisan to the majority community. It pointed out that “the demeanour of some police officers and men in several serious communal riots… has served to strengthen such beliefs”. By “conveniently sparing the persons involved in the brutal attack” against Faizan, as the Delhi HC has said, the Delhi Police may have reinforced such distrust.
On being told that the Court has directed the CBI to investigate Faizan’s case and bring the guilty to book, his mother expressed the hope that justice may finally be served. In March 2020, about a week after the riots, Home Minister Amit Shah had told the Rajya Sabha that “the government will not spare anyone from any side”. However, as the HC observed, “even after four-and-a-half years, the perpetrators of the crime” are at large. After its verdict, the Home Minister’s promise will again be tested by the quality of justice that is served to Faizan’s mother — and others like her.
