As the UP government has sought the withdrawal of all charges against the accused in the murder of Mohammad Akhlaq, citing inconsistencies in the statements of witnesses, the Yogi government has now advanced the same arguments that it had put forth to oppose the grant of bail to the accused eight years ago, The Indian Express reported, citing court records.
The application moved by the prosecution before the trial court under Section 321 of the Code of Criminal Procedure seeks permission to withdraw the case against all the accused in the 2015 lynching, and it rests largely on alleged contradictions and variations in the statements of key prosecution witnesses, a position that mirrors the defence arguments accepted by the Allahabad High Court while granting bail in 2017.
Court records show that when Punit and Arun, two of the accused, were granted bail by the Allahabad High Court in April 2017, the court had taken note of the defence submission that the statements of the principal witnesses, including Akhlaq’s wife Ikraman and daughter Shaistha, contained inconsistencies regarding the identity and number of assailants, even as the state had at the time strongly opposed their release.
The High Court, while granting bail to Punit and Arun through separate orders dated April 6, 2017, observed that Ikraman’s statements recorded in September and October 2015 did not name the applicants as assailants, and it also noted that Shaistha had not named them in her initial statement recorded in October 2015, with their names emerging later in her statement under Section 164 of the CrPC.
Akhlaq was lynched on September 28, 2015, after being dragged out of his house in Bisada village in Dadri area of Gautam Budh Nagar district on the suspicion of slaughtering a calf, following which the police arrested several persons and later filed a chargesheet naming 19 accused, including Vishal Rana, son of a local BJP leader, and his cousin Shivam, who were alleged to have led the mob and assaulted Akhlaq and his family.
The chargesheet invoked multiple provisions of the Indian Penal Code, including murder, rioting and criminal intimidation, and the prosecution's case was built primarily on eyewitness accounts provided by members of Akhlaq’s family and other villagers.
In its recent plea for withdrawal, the prosecution has stated that the statements of eyewitnesses Ikraman, Askari, Shaistha and Danish reflected changes in the number of accused persons over time, and it has highlighted that despite being residents of the same village as the accused, the witnesses altered their accounts during the course of investigation.
Following the grant of bail to Punit and Arun, all the other accused, including Shivam, Vishal Rana, Gaurav, Sandeep, Bheem, Saurabh, Hariom, Sriom, Vivek and Rupendra, approached the High Court seeking bail on grounds of parity, and they were subsequently released, even as the state opposed their pleas before conceding on parity.
The trial court is scheduled to hear the prosecution’s application for withdrawal on Tuesday, while Akhlaq’s counsel has indicated that the move will be contested during the proceedings.