Delhi court allows CBI to recheck phone data in missing student case

Officer told the court that the original report from the CFSL, Hyderabad, was required to resend certain exhibits for re-examination of mobile phone data belonging to three witnesses.

Providing fresh impetus to the investigation into missing Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Najeeb Ahmed, a Delhi court on Tuesday allowed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to retrieve the original forensic report in the case to facilitate re-examination of additional evidence, including mobile phone data of three witnesses.

The court observed that the application was formal in nature and could aid the investigation.

The order was passed by additional chief judicial magistrate Jyoti Maheshwari of the Rouse Avenue courts after an application was moved by the CBI’s investigating officer seeking access to the original forensic report from court records.

Najeeb, a first-year MSc student at JNU, disappeared on October 15, 2016, a day after an altercation at the Mahi-Mandavi hostel involving students allegedly affiliated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The then JNU Students’ Union president, Mohit Pandey, filed a complaint naming nine ABVP-linked students, alleging they had threatened Najeeb.

The case was initially registered as kidnapping by the Delhi Police but saw little progress and was transferred to the CBI in May 2017 on a Delhi high court order, which came on a petition by Najeeb’s mother, Fatima Nafees. Despite extensive searches and scrutiny of CCTV footage, no leads emerged.

In October 2018, the CBI filed a closure report, citing no evidence of abduction or foul play. Fatima challenged the report through a protest petition alleging serious lapses in the investigation.

In December last year, Fatima approached the Delhi high court challenging the trial court’s acceptance of the closure report, arguing that data could not be retrieved from the mobile phones of three witnesses due to software limitations.

Her counsel submitted that independent experts had suggested data extraction was possible using specialised forensic tools such as Cellebrite UFED and Cellebrite Premium, and that the information could provide fresh leads.

On December 19, Justice Sanjeev Narula noted the long-pending nature of the missing person case and directed the CBI to use the tools, if available, to extract the data and reopen the investigation if any new evidence emerged.

During the proceedings on Tuesday, the investigating officer told the court that the original report from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Hyderabad, was required to resend certain exhibits for re-examination of mobile phone data belonging to three witnesses — Vikrant Kumar, Sunil Pratap Singh and Aishwarya Pratap Singh.

The court observed that the application was formal in nature and could aid the investigation, and allowed the agency to take the original forensic report, directing that it be returned to the court after completion of the re-examination.