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Feb 01, 2023

'Ought to Be Restrained': Union Govt Tells HC It's Against Fact-Finding Reports by Rights Bodies

The Union home ministry claimed that such independent reports gave an offence a "political or communal flavour" and discredited statutory investigations.
Shop owners look at the charred remains of the tyre market in riot affected Gokulpuri area of North East Delhi, March 7, 2020. Photo: PTI/File

New Delhi: The Union government last year decried reports by independent fact-finding committees on the northeast Delhi riots of 2020, telling the Delhi high court that they ought to be ‘restrained’ in the future.

Several non-governmental organisations and bodies of rights activists had made field visits to northeast Delhi in the immediate aftermath of the riots, to report on the ground realities of the area. The reports themselves were widely reported upon, especially as rights bodies, both in India and globally, began criticising the Delhi Police’s investigation into the riots as partisan. Police were alleged to have delayed response, and later concentrated on Muslim students and activists who had been protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act – like Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, Khalid Saifi and others – at the expense of bringing to book Hindutva leaders who had been caught on video making provocative speeches ahead of the violence.

In support of a petition which challenges such reports, the Union government has told Delhi high court that such bodies are “private” and “extra-judicial” and called for them to be restrained from publishing on subjects that are “either the matter of FIRs or proceedings pending before a criminal court.”

The response was originally filed in September 2022 by the Secretary of the Union home ministry in response to a petition moved by lawyer Dharmesh Sharma, who sought the quashing of a particular report on the northeast Delhi riots – that by a Delhi Minorities Commission panel.

As The Wire had reported, this report held that violence erupted in parts of northeast Delhi on February 23 soon after BJP leader Kapil Mishra made a short speech calling for forcefully removing anti-CAA protesters at Jafrabad.

Sharma also sought the quashing of reports published by Human Rights Watch, Citizens and Lawyers Initiative, Amnesty and an inquiry panel set up by the Constitutional Conduct Group.

LiveLaw noted that the Union government particularly named human rights organisation Amnesty International and Greenpeace and accused the “proscribed foreign organisations” of “interfering in domestic affairs.”

Amnesty had accused Delhi Police of committing serious rights violations during the Delhi riots and even “indulging in violence with rioters”, calling on the Ministry of Home Affairs to initiate “a prompt, thorough, independent investigation” into all such allegations against law enforcement officials.

Greenpeace had expressed grave concern on the riots, shortly after the violence ended.

The government claimed that these are situations where “a motivated or malicious or sinister device is created by certain vested interest individuals, private organisations, NGOs etc.”, to give the offence a “political or communal flavour” and to discredit statutory investigations.

The Union government said this happened in “Naxal cases” or communal ones and alleged that this happened in cases “where such social or political unrest can be created by supporting one community or caste.”

It is unknown whether the publication of any fact-finding report has led to unrest.

The government has claimed that these reports are “biased” and circulated widely.

“Based on the fake, false or half true facts presented before it, these ‘private and extrajudicial commissions’ enters into a, so called, process of collecting and recording evidences to give it a façade of statutory inquiry or investigation and after conducting such exercise comes out with a completely biased report which in most of the cases is found to be report acting as a cover-up to the offence and portraying real accused as victims of the crimes and real [victims] as the accused of crimes,” the affidavit says, according to LiveLaw.

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