Pinjra Tod activists' plea for court-monitored probe dismissed

new delhi: A Delhi court on Tuesday dismissed an application by Pinjra Tod members Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, seeking a court-monitored probe in a case related to the northeast Delhi riots in February, in which they have been booked under the stringent anti-terror law. The Pinjra Tod members are also students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana said the apprehensions of the accused, Kalita and Narwal, in the case, that the police were not doing a fair investigation seemed to be based "more on anxiety generated because of incarceration and less on any substantial basis or sound logic".

The court said in its order that the police cannot be denigrated simply because some of its members went amiss and there were no valid grounds to saddle the already over-burdened investigating agency with any additional responsibility in the name of monitoring the probe.

Kalita and Narwal have been booked under UAPA for being part of an alleged "premeditated conspiracy" in the riots.

Multiple contemporaneous videos of the Jafrabad protest sites were taken by the police and by reporters present at the area and these would present the true state of affairs before the court but the police are deliberately withholding such an important piece of evidence, lawyer Adit Pujari argued for the petitioners.

He added that there were allegedly videos of members of the police force waiting on the sidelines or actively assisting persons bringing stones in the area. Pujari alleged that the local police were animus against protestors and it was evident from the videos that police used excessive force and as such the Delhi Police was not an impartial investigator of the case.

The court said that the prayer which also calls for call data, video footage, among others, also deserved to be rejected on account of vagueness and lack of specificity. Mechanically ordering the wholesale seizure of call data of police officials, so-called witnesses or so-called real culprits, police station diaries or cellphone tower data, among others would not only raise privacy concerns and lead to unnecessary interference in other pending investigations but also not serve any practical purpose in the case, the court said.