The Delhi Police has transferred the probe of the Delhi riots to the crime branch and has said that the matter will be investigated by two Special Investigation Teams (SITs). So far, 48 FIRs have been registered and 130 people have been arrested in the matter. The SITs will be headed by DCPs Joy Tirkey and Rajesh Deo and Additional Commissioner (crime branch) BK Singh will supervise the work of the SITs.
The two officers who have been given the charge of the case have recently been in the news. They are the ones overseeing the investigation into the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Jamia Millia Islamia University (JMIU).
Tirkey is heading the investigation in the 2020 JNU violence and the clashes between the lawyers and the policemen at the Tis Hazari court complex last year. He was also who had investigated the sexual harassment case against the former Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, who was given a clean chit after “no substance” was found in the allegations.
Out of the two officers, the case being given to Deo is seen as more contentious because the Election Commission of India (ECI) had taken strict action against him last month and barred him from the Delhi Assembly Election duty. Deo had suggested that East Delhi resident Kapil Baisala who had fired in the air near Shaheen Bagh, the site of the anti – Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, had links with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He had released photos to the media of a man resembling Baisala with AAP leaders and had also alleged that both, Kapil and his father Gajendra Singh, had joined the AAP last year.
The EC had said that Deo’s statements, “referring to a political party”, especially when investigations were “still going on”, could “adversely” impact the free and fair elections and removed him from election duties.
There has been no progress in the investigation about the attacks on the students and faculty of JNU that was carried out by masked goons allegedly from the ABVP.
In the case of police brutalities on the students of JMI, videos of the police unleashing indiscriminate violence have emerged even though the police claim that they entered the campus only to “safeguard the students”.
Handing over the investigation to one officer for being biased and another for not making any progress in sensitive matters, doesn’t seem to be a good move by the Delhi police. By giving the charge to such officers who have delayed important investigations and are openly seen taking sides of political parties, it looks like the handing over of the charge to these officers is another attempt at a cover up of the failure of the police to stop the violence in Delhi and derail the investigation.
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