Five Hindutva men’s convictions upheld over Muslim man’s killing during 2020 anti-Muslim pogrom
The Delhi High Court dismissed pleas filed by five Hindutva men seeking to overturn their convictions in connection with the killing of a 22-year-old Muslim man during the February 2020 anti-Muslim pogrom, observing that the evidence established their involvement in the assault.
Justice Madhu Jain rejected the appeals filed by Aman Kashyap, Devinder Kumar, Pradeep Rai, Ashish and Arun Kumar, upholding their conviction for culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Sections 304 Part I and 149 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), alongside the charge of rioting while armed with deadly weapons under Section 148, Live Law reported.
The court observed that the evidence went beyond establishing the accused men’s mere presence in a mob, as they had been at the forefront of an armed assembly and exhorted others to attack the victim, even after the victim had fallen.
“The deceased was pursued, surrounded and assaulted even after he had fallen near the police barricades,” the court said, noting that the weapons carried by the mob and the continued assault demonstrated its common object of causing bodily harm.
It further held that once membership of an unlawful assembly and its common object, or the members’ knowledge of that object, are established, the prosecution need not identify the individual who inflicted the fatal injuries to secure convictions under Section 149.
Monish, a daily-wage labourer from Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi district, had lived in the Mustafabad area of Delhi for nearly a decade. On February 25, 2020, he was allegedly chased and assaulted by a mob near Peer Baba Mazar in Chand Bagh, during the communal violence that engulfed north-east Delhi, and later succumbed to his injuries at Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital.
The post-mortem report attributed his death to shock resulting from ante-mortem brain injuries caused by blunt-force impact.
The trial court convicted the five men on November 30, 2024, and sentenced them on January 13, 2025, to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for culpable homicide and one year of simple imprisonment for rioting with deadly weapons, besides imposing a fine of Rs 30,000; the sentences were ordered to run concurrently.
Dismissing their challenges over inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts, delays in recording police witnesses’ statements, the absence of a test identification parade and alleged investigative lapses, the High Court found the testimony credible.
It noted that a beat constable already knew the accused through his official duties, while other police witnesses corroborated the pursuit and assault, and ruled that their evidence could not be discarded merely because they were police personnel.