Delhi court convicts 3 people for murdering Ankit Saxena in 2018 hate crime

Anki Saxena, a photographer by profession, was brutally murdered by the family members of his girlfriend in full public view in West Delhi on February 1, 2018

A Delhi court has convicted three people for murdering 23-year-old Ankit Saxena in full public view in a hate crime in West Delhi on February 1, 2018.

Ankit Saxena (File)

Anki Saxena, a photographer by profession, was brutally murdered by the family members of his girlfriend in full public view in Raghubir Nagar, West Delhi. Saxena’s family with the help of other people took him to Guru Gobind Singh Hospital in an e-rickshaw, where he was declared brought dead.

Additional sessions judge (ASJ) Sunil Kumar Sharma in an order passed on December 23, 2023, concluded that the prosecution had successfully proved that, Mohd. Salim, Akbar Ali and Shahnaz Begum had committed the murder.

“All the accused persons viz. accused A-1 Mohd. Salim, accused A-2 Akbar Ali and accused A-3 Shahnaj Begum stand convicted for the charge of the offence punishable under Section 302 (murder)and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) IPC,” the court said.

The court additionally convicted Begum under section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of IPC for assaulting Saxena’s mother, Kamlesh Saxena, while she was trying to protect her son.

The prosecution relied upon 28 witnesses with key witnesses being Saxena’s father, Yashpal Saxena, mother and his friends, Nitin, and Anmol.

“These witnesses have consistently elucidated what the accused persons did to the deceased and how they committed the alleged offence... Their testimony before the Court is contemporaneous to the alleged offence and are consistent on all material aspects that constitute the offence”, the court said in its 121-page order.

The court also observed that their testimony was consistent with the postmortem report as well as with the testimony of the doctor who conducted the postmortem and with the testimony of the forensic science laboratory (FSL) expert, further lending credence to the case of the prosecution.

It, however, discarded the testimonies of the defence witnesses as motivated, tutored, contradictory and unreliable. The court also found that the statements made by the accused under section 313 of the code of criminal procedure were also contradictory in nature.

The court also rejected the arguments of the defence regarding discrepancies in the statements of the prosecution witnesses stating that the discrepancies do not touch the core of the prosecution case and are required to be ignored being minor discrepancies.

It was also observed by the court that the prosecution had also successfully proved that the motive behind Saxena’s murder was his relationship with the girl, due to which the parents of the girl had also changed their residence, but their relationship was not coming to an end.

The court has now listed the matter for hearing the arguments on sentence on January 15.