A report by the Polis Project has come down heavily on the role of the Delhi Police in framing human rights defenders for the violence that broke out in Delhi during late February 2020. The report titled Manufacturing Evidence: How the Police is framing and arresting constitutional rights defenders in India presents “presents evidence of the abuse of power, violations of due process, and attempts at manufacturing evidence by the Delhi Police in order to weave a ‘conspiracy’ about the involvement of anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) protesters in the violence.”
The Polis Project is an international group that claims to be a “hybrid research and journalism organization”. It begins by quoting what IPS officer Vibhuti Narain Rai had told human rights defender and journalist Teesta Setalvad in an interview in 1995, “No riot can last for more than 24 hours without consent of the state.”
Taking forward this premise, the Polis Project state in their report that the Delhi Police “failed to help survivors” and that their “refusal/delay/obfuscation in the registration of FIRs by victims, and the failure to disclose the name of persons arrested/FIRs violates due process and helps shield the guilty.” The report goes on to further claims that police are “creating a baseless narrative about a ‘conspiracy’ that implicates Muslim victims of violence and activists protesting erosion of Constitutional rights of citizens, and erases actions of Hindu nationalist provocations.”
The report says that the police’s investigations are compromised by “presumption of guilt rather than presentation of evidence”, and also alleges “suppression of evidence related to violence by Hindu nationalists.” It also accused the Delhi Police of “manufacturing false evidence” and Islamophobic behaviour”.
The Polis Project calls on the authorities to immediately release all human rights defenders and students being held in pre-trial detention, as well as to book political leaders against whom it alleges “there is clear evidence of incitement and abetment to violence”. The report clearly names BJP leader Kapil Mishra in this regard and also notes the role of Whatsapp groups, especially one called ‘Kattar Hindu Ekta’ in spreading hate and organising targeted violence against Muslims.
The entire report may be red here:
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