It has been five years since the deadly violence in Northeast Delhi in February 2020 claimed – officially – over 50 lives and displaced thousands, a majority of whom were Muslim. For some, much has changed over the past five years – Kapil Mishra, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader accused of inciting violence through hate speech in the presence of police officials on February 23, 2020, has been politically elevated within the BJP and in Delhi. He is presently an elected official of the Delhi assembly from his constituency in North East Delhi and the new cabinet minister of law and justice.
However, not much has changed for the families awaiting justice and compensation for their losses. The bail petitions of those accused of allegedly conspiring the violence have been languishing at various courts. Student activist Umar Khalid’s bail petition has been rejected three times – twice by the Karkardooma court and once by the Delhi high court. In 2024, Khalid withdrew his bail petition from the Supreme Court citing “change in circumstances” after his plea was adjourned at least 14 times over 11 months.
In January, 160 academics and activists signed a statement demanding the release of Khalid and other activists accused in the Delhi riots conspiracy case such as Sharjeel Imam, Gulfisha Fatima and Khalid Saifi among others.
Five years on, serious questions continue to haunt the authorities, including the Delhi Police as its role during and after the violence came under heavy scrutiny by the victims and subsequently, the courts.
The police investigation of the violence
In the aftermath of the violence, the Delhi Police, which reports directly to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, registered 758 cases. Thousands of local residents in North East Delhi were arrested when investigation began during the nationwide lockdown in 2020. According to the police, they arrested over 2,000 people in 2022 of whom 1,610 were accused of crimes from which 798 were Hindu and 812 were Muslim. As of 2024, chargesheets were filed in only 53% of the 695 cases pertaining to the riots and judgements have been pronounced in only 88 cases.
So far, the courts have given their decision in only 126 cases of the total 758, according to an investigation by BBC Hindi. In the 126 judgements, more than 80% have resulted in acquittals or discharges as the witnesses turned hostile. In many of these cases, police officials served as witnesses to the events, but the court did not find their testimonies credible.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
In addition, the police also filed another case in the aftermath of the riots alleging a conspiracy under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA). The UAPA is the country’s draconian anti-terror law that state authorities have excessively wielded over the past years to target students, activists, journalists, lawyers and other members of civil society. Between 2014 and 2022, a total of 8,719 cases of UAPA were filed, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
In the Delhi riots conspiracy case, the police arrested 18 people of whom 16 are Muslim, including student activists Umar Khalid, Safoora Zargar, Sharjeel Imam, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Meeran Haider. Others include activists Khalid Saifi and Gulfisha Khatoon, former Congress councillor Ishrat Jahan, former Aam Aadmi Party councillor Tahir Hussain, All Indian Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen politician Shifa-ur-Rehman, education consultant Tasleem Ahmed, and North East Delhi residents Shadab Ahmed, Saleem Malik, Saleem Khan, Athar Khan and SIM card salesman Faizan Khan. So far, only six have been granted bail while the bail petitions of others have been dragging on for years at various courts in Delhi.
According to the police in their infamous “59/2020” chargesheet, the protests in December 2019 against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), and the subsequent violence were a “terror conspiracy”, allegedly orchestrated to overthrow the Indian government during Donald Trump’s official visit as US President in February 2020. The chargesheet relied extensively on WhatsApp chats, social media posts and witness statements to support its narrative.
However, what the police failed to address in the first 17,000-page chargesheet, and the chargesheets they filed later, is whether they unwittingly admitted an intelligence failure on their part, and therefore on the part of the home ministry – if their claims of “large-scale pre-planned violence against the state” are to be believed.
A majoritarian bias?
Before filing the first chargesheet in the conspiracy case in September 2020, the police interrogated hundreds, including young Muslim students, activists, academics and members of civil society groups in Delhi. Many students and activists who were interrogated during the course of the investigation into the riots in 2020 accused police officials of displaying a blatant religious bias and alleged they made communally-coloured remarks.
File image. Security personnel walk past Bhagirathi Vihar area of the riot-affected northeast Delhi, February 26, 2020. Photo: PTI/File
The accusation of a bias also hovers heavily in the case of the five Muslim men who were assaulted by Delhi police officials and forced to sing the national anthem during the violence in 2020. In 2024, the case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation, but hardly any progress has been recorded. The incident, recorded on video, was linked to the death of a man named Faizan. In January, a magistrate ordered an FIR against the Station House Officer of a police station in North East Delhi accused in the matter. However, this order was stayed a few weeks later in February by another Delhi court.
Some witnesses also alleged they were coerced into giving false testimonies against the accused. Furthermore, it is important to note that the police, in the chargesheet, inadvertently leaked the names, addresses and other identifying details of their protected witnesses in the case. Some of these witnesses claimed that the police allegedly coerced them into falsely testifying against the accused. Again, this raises serious doubts over the veracity of the evidence presented by them and the impartiality of the investigation.
Even the fact-finding report of the Delhi Minorities Commission pointed out “partisan bias and shoddy methodology” in the Delhi Police’s riots investigations. Similarly, courts in Delhi have harshly critiqued the police’s investigative capabilities in other cases pertaining to the riots. In multiple instances, judges have pointed out a lack of evidence, identical witness statements, irregularities in filing the FIR, “callous” probes while granting bail to the accused in various cases related to the riots.
On the other hand, the police’s conduct while investigating Kapil Mishra for his alleged actions under the conspiracy case paints a picture completely contrasting the widely available video footage documenting his presence in North East Delhi. In the chargesheet, there is a brief section detailing the interview of Mishra. The questions of this interview are noteworthy as they are close-ended and require Mishra to answer in ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without any follow up questions to probe his role in the alleged violence.
For example, instead of probing the nature and impact of his speech on February 23, 2020, which was widely shared on social media, the police asked him, “Did you deliver any speech in North East district on 23/02/2020. If yes, then the content of the speech”. To this, Mishra lied and said he did not give any speech on that day and only told the police to remove the road blockade in three days.
Other questions the police asked him include, “What was the purpose and intent of the speech?” and “Did you have the copy of the speech?”. To both these questions, Mishra lied again and said he did not deliver a speech on that day.
Several scholars have noted that the performance of police officials during and after instances of communal violence is directly linked to the pervasiveness of a bias that usually tilts in favour of the majority community. Afterall, police officials are also vulnerable to communal propaganda. While it is difficult to assess how this bias persists, taking the diversity and ethnic composition of police forces into account could help determine the “modus operandi of the police in post-pogrom circumstances”.
Police diversity in Delhi
In 2015, the Union home ministry discontinued sharing data publicly on the share of Muslims in police. However, data obtained through Right to Information queries on the religious and ethnic diversity of the Delhi Police, its various departments and districts in Delhi as of October 2023 reveal an alarmingly low representation of Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in comparison to the overwhelming majority of Hindus as police officials.
A total of 29 units of the Delhi Police responded to the RTI queries, of which only 19 provided data on religious composition within their unit. Taking these limited numbers into consideration, Muslims account only for 1.2% of 26,532 officials employed within the 19 units of Delhi Police.
For instance, the Special Cell, which is currently investigating the Delhi riots conspiracy case, consists of 1,744 Hindu police officials, followed by 56 Muslims, 11 Christians, 37 Sikhs and one Buddhist officer, along with 195 officers from Scheduled Castes and 77 from Scheduled Tribe communities.
The unit of North East Delhi, where the violence occurred, did not respond to the RTI query. But data from the neighbouring Shahdara district reveals there were only 60 Muslims, 26 Christians, 11 Sikhs in comparison to 2,449 Hindus as of October 2023.
The share of Muslims in Delhi Police is in stark contrast with their population in the capital’s prisons. There is a wide gap between the number of convicts and undertrials from the Muslim community. As of 2022, Muslim convicts in Delhi’s prisons are only 8% of Muslim undertrials, according to the Prison Statistics of India. The over representation of the community in the city and the country’s prisons could perhaps also be attributed to multiple factors, including the police’s communal bias.
The RTI queries also sought responses from the Delhi Police about their efforts to boost representation in accordance with the Sachar Committee report in 2006 on the empowerment of Muslims, which recommended boosting their share of employment in professions like policing and education. Multiple departments of the Delhi police, including its headquarters, responded that “no such type of record is maintained”.
Broadly, the prevalence of a majoritarian bias can also be assessed through perceptions of the police. One in every five respondents believe that police discriminate on the basis of religion, with Muslims being most likely to hold such a view, according to a survey on the status of policing in India conducted in 2018 by Common Cause, Lokniti and Centre for the Study of Developing Society (CSDS).
The perception of the police amongst the people, and its ethnic composition directly correspond to its ability to serve the population it represents. There is much work cut out for the Delhi Police on this front, as it is a way to ensure accountability on their part.
Vijayta Lalwani is an independent journalist and writer.
Christophe Jaffrelot is research director at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Professor of Politics and Sociology at King’s College London and Non-Resident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His publications include Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2021, and Gujarat under Modi: Laboratory of Today’s India, Hurst, 2024, both of which are published in India by Westland.