'No Substantiative Evidence': MP Court Acquits 11 Muslim Men Charged By Police For 2022 Khargone Violence

The court further noted that there was no explanation on how police selected the accused from a mob of about 50 people and no test identification parade was ever conducted.

The Wire Staff

The court further noted that there was no explanation on how police selected the accused from a mob of about 50 people and no test identification parade was ever conducted.

no substantiative evidence mp court acquits 11 muslim men charged by police for 2022 khargone violence

Representative image of gavel and hammer. Photo: Sora Shimazaki/Pexels.

New Delhi: Four years after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government filed cases over the communal violence in Khargone on April 10, 2022, a session court has acquitted 11 Muslim men who were accused by the state police of being involved in the violence, reported Indian Express.

In a detailed judgment Monday (July 27), fourth additional sessions Judge Mukesh Nath held that the prosecution’s case collapsed on the question of identification as eight of its 11 eyewitnesses failed to identify any of the accused while laboratory findings failed to establish the alleged use of petrol bombs and other explosives.

“None of these eight witnesses identified any of the accused; none stated that any accused had committed any act constituting the incident; no substantive evidence emerged in their testimonies against any accused,” said the court.

The court on Monday acquitted the 11 accused – Ibadat, Sadiq, Abdullah, Saheb alias Shahib, Sheryar, Faizal, Azam, Shabbir, Imran, Mustaq and Rajik of – who were charged by the police with rioting, arson, house trespass and offences under the Explosive Substances Act in connection with the violence.

The court further noted that there was no explanation on how police selected the accused from a mob of about 50 people and no test identification parade was ever conducted.

The prosecution’s case had rested mostly on the testimony of Vaishnavi Jain, a local resident. The court described her as the only witness to attribute the incident to all 11 accused. However, the judgment found her evidence riddled with contradictions.

The court observed that while Jain claimed she recognised all the accused by their faces, her own father Dinesh Jain and brother Akash Jain both stated that the rioters had “their faces covered with cloth”.

The court’s judgment also questioned how police had implicated all 11 accused in the first place. It noted that the FIR named only six accused, while five others were added later without any explanation.

This article went live on July twenty-ninth, two thousand twenty six, at thirty-six minutes past twelve at noon.

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