Delhi Court Raps Police Over 'Casual' Probe Into Kapil Mishra's Communal Tweets

New Delhi: A court has chastised Delhi Police over the manner in which it is conducting an investigation into Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Delhi cabinet minister Kapil Mishra.

The Hindu has reported that the matter pertains to an FIR filed against Mishra for allegedly posting communally polarising messages on X (formerly Twitter) ahead of the 2020 elections.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasia of the Rouse Avenue Courts said that while the court tried to press for the collection of evidence from Mishra's X handle for the last one year since March 20, 2024, its efforts have been in vain.

The judicial magistrate said it had asked the police to gather the relevant details almost 10 times until April 8, 2025.

LiveLaw reports that the case is over tweets by Mishra in which he had claimed that the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress had created a “mini Pakistan” at Shaheen Bagh, which was seeing peaceful sit-ins in protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act, and that the then assembly polls would be a contest between “India and Pakistan”.

Slamming the Delhi Police for its "casual attitude," the judge observed how no one was present on behalf of the police to apprise the court on the case.

The court said, according to the Hindu report, that “before any stringent remarks could be made upon the casual attitude of the investigating agency qua the court directions, this court is constrained to bring it to the notice of the Commissioner of Police with respect to the state of affairs and non-adequate explanation on the part of the investigating agency”.

LiveLaw has reported how in March, the Delhi high court refused to stay the trial court proceedings against Mishra in the case, dismissing Mishra's revision plea and observing that the word 'Pakistan' was very skillfully woven by him in his alleged statements to spew hatred, careless to communal polarisation that may ensue in the election campaign, only to garner votes.

The latest observations come two months after a first information report was ordered to be filed against Mishra to probe his role in the northeast Delhi riots, five years after the violence took place.

The Delhi police had opposed the plea that sought the FIR.

It had said that Mishra’s alleged role in the communal violence had already been investigated and nothing incriminating was found.

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