New Delhi: Deprecating the “double standards” adopted by a Delhi Police inspector while probing six complaints linked to the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, a sessions court here on Friday referred the matter to the city Commissioner of Police Sanjay Arora for assessment of his conduct.
Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala was hearing arguments on charges in a case related to the riots.
According to the prosecution, the IO was investigating six different rioting incidents arising out of six complaints, which were clubbed together because of the proximity of places of occurrence and time.
“When the file has been perused, it could be found that the IO, i.e, Inspector Shiv Charan prepared site plans for three places of incidents only and he did not bother to prepare site plans in respect of other places of incidents, though he claims that he had inspected those place of incidents as well,” ASJ Pramachala said.
Underlining that the IO did not provide any justification for “adopting two different procedures of investigation in respect of different complaints,” he said, “This is the situation of the investigating agency (Delhi Police) when more than six months were taken by them in the name of preparing a calendar of evidence.”
The court had asked Delhi Police to prepare a calendar of evidence so the investigating agency could realise what evidence was placed on record and whether any “vital evidence” was missing, the judge said.
“So prima facie, I find that neither investigation was done properly, nor the exercise of preparing a calendar of evidence was done with an open mind, even to be aware of their (Delhi Police’s) own omissions,” he said.
The court said a “consolidated site plan” was also filed by the IO, but even in the consolidated version, all places of incidents were not mentioned.
“Let the department make an assessment of such double standard adopted by IO. For the purpose of assessment of the conduct of IO, the matter is referred to the Commissioner of Police and for the purpose of getting the undone (incomplete) job done, it is referred to the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Northeast district,” it said.
The court directed that a site plan showing all the places of incidents being probed in the case had to be filed by September 15.