The CBI on Thursday told the Delhi High Court that till date its probe into the missing case of JNU student Najeeb Ahmed has not found any evidence to show any crime was committed and that it was seriously considering filing a closure report.
Will examine further
“We are seriously contemplating whether to file a closure report,” the agency told a Bench of Justice S. Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel. The agency, however, made it clear that it was going to examine a few more aspects before taking a final decision in this regard.
Najeeb had gone missing from the Mahi-Mandvi hostel of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on October 15, 2016 following a scuffle with some other students, allegedly affiliated to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), on October 14, 2016.
Najeeb’s mother plea
The CBI said it did not find any material to arrest or take coercive action against the nine students who are suspected by Najeeb’s family of being behind his disappearance.
The High Court was hearing Najeeb’s mother plea seeking directions to the police to trace her son.
Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for Najeeb’s mother Fatima Nafees, said the nine suspected students were named in a complaint by 18 students who were eyewitnesses to the assault on Najeeb, yet they were not interrogated.
The probe was handed over to the CBI in May last year after the Delhi Police remained clueless about his whereabouts even seven months after he went missing.
The Bench asked the CBI to make a compilation of the statements given to it by the 18 students as well as the three wardens and three guards who were in the hostel on the day of the incident. The court said it will go through the compilation to see what the eyewitnesses have said in their statements to the CBI.
Mr. Gonsalves also argued that the status reports being filed by the agency be provided to Najeeb’s family after redacting the confidential material.
The contention was opposed by the agency which on Thursday filed its ninth status report in the matter. The report indicated the outcome of its decision to send three mobile phones, belonging to some of the suspected students to the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Hyderabad for analysis.
