Crime Today News
Mohammad Ilyas has been experiencing mixed emotions after a Delhi court acted on his five-year old plea asking for an first information report to be filed against Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra for his alleged involvement in the 2020 Delhi riots.
“I’m happy and relieved with the order,” the 57-year-old resident of Yamuna Vihar in North East Delhi told Scroll. “Till a few days back, I was afraid that the court would reject my application and there would be no FIR.”
But Ilyas’ happiness is tempered by the fact that does not think the Delhi Police will actually act on the order. His lawyer Mehmood Pracha has told him that the Delhi police will see a stay on the order from a higher court.
“The police will try to delay this,” Ilyas said. “If they wanted to reign in the actual rioters, then my FIR would have been registered in 2020 itself.”
He said that since the order was pronounced on Tuesday, he had not been contacted by the police about registering the first information report.
No first information reports have been filed against Mishra for his alleged role in the 2020 Delhi Riots.
Five-year legal struggle
Ilyas claims that on February 23, 2020, he saw Mishra and his associates blocking a road at Kardam Puri, just across his residence in Yamuna Vihar, and break carts belonging to Muslims and Dalits. He alleges that police officers were with Mishra during this time but did not stop him.
After the rioting stopped, Ilyas alleges, he tried to get a first information report registered against Mishra, among others, but the Delhi police turned him away three times.
As per Indian law, when a verbal or written complaint alleging a cognisable offence is made to the police, they are bound to register a first information report and investigate the matter.
Cognisable offences under Indian law are serious crimes that threaten public safety or order. For such alleged crimes, the police can register a case and make arrests without the approval of a court. The crimes o which Mishra is accused are cognisable offences.
In November 2020, Ilyas moved a magistrate’s court to seek that a first information report be registered against Mishra.
The progress of his application in the court was frustratingly slow. The application was listed 24 times before seven different judges of the North East district court in Karkardooma. The court directed last year that the application be filed before a special MP/MLA court – courts designated to handle criminal cases against sitting and former MPs and MLAs for faster trials.
The special court listed the matter 15 more times before two different magistrates, eventually delivering its order on Tuesday. The court said that the evidence put forward by the prosecution pointed to the fact that Mishra was present in the area in question and that “all the things were corroborating”.
Ilyas told Scroll that he was present in the court when the order was pronounced. “Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasiya called me before the courtroom and said that the credibility of my complaint was very high,” Ilyas said. “Hearing him say this was huge for me.”
He added: “The police have in the last few years visited me so many times and questioned why I was trying to get the FIR registered. But I saw the violence with my own eyes. The magistrate’s words validated my claims.”
Family worried
Ilyas told Scroll that some of his relatives were worried about the media spotlight and public attention that he may get due to the order.
Scroll had earlier reported that over the course of his five-year struggle to register a first information report against Mishra, Ilyas had faced constant threats and harassment, mostly from the police.
He had alleged that two of his younger brothers, who were living in Dehradun when the riots took place, were booked by the Delhi police for the murder of a police constable during the riots as retribution for his application.
The two of them had to subsequently give up their businesses in Uttarakhand and move to Delhi in order to be present in court for hearings in the murder trial.
“My brothers worry that the police will now file some false case against me,” he said.
But Ilyas is ready to see his legal struggle through. “Yesterday was just the first step in the realisation of my struggle for justice,” he said.
“I merely want those who committed the riots to face trial in court,” he added. “Then it is up to the court to decide how to penalise them.”
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