Desecration of graves: Ghaziabad court acquits BJP MLA and 4 others

The Ghaziabad police on September 21, 2007, registered a case at Sihani Gate police station against student leaders Nand Kishor Gurjar and others for desecrating British-era graves

A Ghaziabad court on Tuesday acquitted five suspects, including incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Nand Kishor Gurjar, in a case related to the desecration of graves at a Christian cemetery near Delhi-Meerut Road in 2007, citing a lack of evidence.

The Christian cemetery near Delhi-Meerut Road. (Sakib Ali /HT Photo)

Holding that the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, the court of additional chief judicial magistrate Ravi Shankar Gupta acquitted Gurjar, who was then a student leader, and others of the charges of rioting, trespassing, and defiling a place of worship, among others.

The prosecution case was that the Ghaziabad police on September 21, 2007, registered a case at Sihani Gate police station against student leaders Gurjar, Yatendra Nagar and others for allegedly desecrating graves at the cemetery located along the Delhi-Meerut Road near New Bus Adda Metro station. The FIR said the graves in the cemetery date back to period of the British rule.

The site at present has a boundary wall and a small gate at the entrance with a board which states that it has been “declared to be of national importance under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958” by the Archaeological Survey of India.

The police booked the five under Indian Penal Code sections 147 (rioting), 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship), 297 (trespassing on burial places) and 427 (causing damages) besides provisions of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act.

The police filed a charge-sheet in the case naming Gurjar, Nagar and three others – Praveen Kumar, Mukesh Singh and Pradeep Kumar Singh on October 19, 2007.

“Case complainant Jitendra Singh Kalra (then in charge of Nandgram police post) gave a complaint against Nagar and Gurjar and others but the case complainant in his examination and cross examination declined to identify the accused,” the court said in its final order on Tuesday.

“Upon examination of evidence, the prosecution has failed to prove the case against the accused beyond a reasonable doubt... The accused are acquitted from charges levied against them,” the court said.

“The prosecution in this case produced five witnesses and all of them were policemen. They could not prove the presence of the accused at the incident site nor could they not produce any eye-witness in the form of a private individuals. There was no identification parade of the accused persons carried out,” said Atul Kumar, the defence counsel.

Gurjar said he has been contesting the case since the past 15 years and the court has finally given him justice.

“The case lodged against me and others was politically motivated and it was done to harass us and to send out a message to not raise our voice over public issues,” Gurjar said.