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Delhi HC upholds 7-yr sentence of five convicted for culpable homicide during 2020 riots
New DelhiThe Delhi High Court has upheld a trial court order, sentencing five men to seven-year jail terms for culpable homicide in connection with the death of a 22-year-old man during the 2020 Delhi riots
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New Delhi
The Delhi High Court has upheld a trial court order, sentencing five men to seven-year jail terms for culpable homicide in connection with the death of a 22-year-old man during the 2020 Delhi riots.
In its verdict on Tuesday, justice Madhu Jain dismissed the appeals filed by convicts Aman Kashyap, Devinder Kumar, Pradeep Rai, Ashish alias Goli, and Arun Kumar against their conviction, observing that the evidence established “more than the mere presence” of the five men among the crowd.
“In the present case, the evidence establishes more than the mere presence of the appellants in a crowd. PW-10 identified all five appellants at the forefront of the armed mob, exhorting others to assault the deceased. The deceased was pursued, surrounded and assaulted even after he had fallen near the police barricades. The conduct attributed to the appellants, the weapons carried by members of the mob and the continued assault upon the deceased provide the factual basis for concluding that the assembly had an unlawful common object of assaulting the deceased and causing bodily harm to him,” the court said.
The court delivered the verdict while hearing the five men’s appeals challenging the trial court’s November 30, 2024 order convicting them and its January 2025 order sentencing them.
The five were convicted under sections 148 (rioting while armed with a deadly weapon) and 304 Part I (culpable homicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The case was based on an FIR registered at the Dayalpur police station after Monish, son of Ali Sher,was allegedly chased and assaulted by a mob near Brijpuri on February 25, 2020. He succumbed to his injuries at a hospital.
The men argued that the prosecution’s case suffered from inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts, delays by police in recording witness statements and the absence of a test identification parade.
The Delhi Police, represented by special public prosecutor Rajat Nair and advocate Dhruv Pande, asserted that the incident took place during the communal riots that took place in North-East Delhi on February 24 and 25 of 2020, when the police machinery was engaged in controlling widespread violence and responding to numerous emergency calls. Nair contended that the circumstances during the said period were relevant while appreciating the delay in registering the FIR and recording statements of certain prosecution witnesses.
