2020 Delhi riots: HC issues notice in Tahir Hussain’s plea against conviction

A bench of Justices Prathiba M Singh and Vikas Mahajan sought Delhi Police’s response

The Delhi high court on Wednesday issued notice in former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Tahir Hussain’s petition challenging his conviction and life sentence in connection with the murder of Intelligence Bureau (IB) official Ankit Sharma during the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots.

Former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain. (PTI)

A bench of Justices Prathiba M Singh and Vikas Mahajan sought Delhi Police’s response and fixed December 2 as the next date of hearing. The court would hear the petitions filed by two other convicts, Nazim and Kasim, the same day. Special public prosecutor Rajat Nair and advocate Dhruv Pande represented the Delhi Police.

A trial court on July 13 convicted Hussain and four others for Sharma’s murder. It said Hussain and an “armed” mob carried out a “savage” and “relentless” attack. The trial court acquitted six other accused.

On July 31, the trial court sentenced Hussain and four others to life, ruling that while the crime was “horrendous” and “sickening”, the prosecution had failed to prove that the convicts were beyond the possibility of reform. The court rejected the Delhi Police’s plea for capital punishment. It observed that although the murder fell within the “rarest of the rare” category on account of its brutality, the prosecution had not established that the convicts’ continued existence in prison “would pose a menace to society”.

In his appeal challenging the trial court’s July 13 and July 31 orders, Hussain, through advocate Rajiv Mohan, argued that the investigation was tainted from the outset and was aimed at implicating him to assuage public anger.

The petition asserted that the first information report in the case was ante-dated, ante-timed, and based on a fabricated complaint. It added that no meaningful investigation was conducted until March 2020, when he was arrested in another case.

The appeal alleged that witnesses were planted, statements of genuine eyewitnesses were manipulated, and the actual perpetrators were not brought to book. It added that the verdict convicting him is unsustainable in law, based on surmises and conjectures, unsupported by evidence.