Several political parties, activists and organisations on Sunday issued statements protesting against the alleged attempts by the Delhi police to implicate prominent political leadership, academics, cultural personalities and activists in connection with the communal violence in North-East Delhi in February.
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said it was shocked by the “brazenness” with which the Delhi police, acting under Union Home Minister Amit Shah, had tried to implicate prominent political leadership . “The Delhi police have dragged in CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, economist Jayati Ghosh, Delhi University professor Apoorvanand, Swaraj Abhiyan leader Yogendra Yadav and documentary filmmaker Rahul Roy, among other prominent personalities, as persons who had encouraged the protesters as part of a ‘plan’,” the party said in a statement. It added that this action was in line with the growing pattern of the most blatant abuse of the police and other Central agencies such as the CBI, the NIA and the ED to frame prominent opponents and demonise them.
The CPI(M) said it condemned this “obnoxious action” by the Delhi police to further the narrative of their political masters and urged the government to desist from such acts of criminalising peaceful political protests.
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‘Vindictive, farcical’
CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary, Dipankar Bhattacharya, in a statement said the Delhi police’s “investigation” is becoming more vindictive and farcical with every passing day. He added that in all their chargesheets till date, the Delhi police had pointedly refused to act on evidence that Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur and other BJP leaders instigated violence against anti-CAA protesters and the Muslim community but had in the past few months, arrested a range of students and alumni of Jamia Millia Islamia and JNU.
“It was reported yesterday that a supplementary chargesheet filed by the Delhi police comprises largely of ‘disclosure’ statements attributed to feminist student activists of Pinjra Tod. These so called ‘disclosure’ statements amount to custodial confessions, and are inadmissible as evidence in court,” the CPI(ML) said. It added that these statements were vehicles for introducing the names of CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, and economist Jayati Ghosh among others. “The Modi regime is using the Delhi police’s ‘riots investigation’ as a weapon to try and silence dissenting voices against the government,” Mr. Bhattacharya said.
JNUTA’s stand
The JNUTA said the Delhi police had painted the anti-CAA protest as a conspiracy to instigate the violence, notwithstanding the fact that these protests had continued peacefully for months and the open calls to violence if any came from those hostile to them. “As a result of this spin given to it by the police, all those who joined it or appealed to people to join the protest have been made potential co-conspirators,” the JNUTA said. It added that it was evident from the names added in the latest chargesheet that there was an attempt to silence all democratic opposition.
“The JNUTA unequivocally condemns these shameful actions of the Delhi police which only serve to completely undermine any remaining credibility the institution had of being an investigative agency operating within the framework of the law,” the association said in a statement.
