New Delhi, India – Legal professionals, activists and victims of final 12 months’s anti-Muslim violence within the Indian capital have accused the authorities and police of sabotaging the investigation and pressuring them to withdraw the instances.
The workplace of a distinguished lawyer preventing the instances of some victims of the February 2020 violence was raided in New Delhi final month, with authorized consultants calling it an assault on client-lawyer privilege.
Mehmood Pracha, 56, says he was focused as a result of he’s engaged on instances which may hyperlink House Minister Amit Shah, the closest aide to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to the worst violence the Indian capital had witnessed in almost 40 years.
In February final 12 months, greater than 50 individuals – largely Muslims – had been killed and tons of of others injured when violence broke out within the metropolis after supporters of the governing Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP) attacked a sit-in in opposition to a controversial citizenship legislation.
The Citizenship Modification Act (CAA) fast-tracks Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from three neighbouring nations, however blocks naturalisation for Muslims – a provision that critics say violates India’s secular structure.
Advocate @MehmoodPracha raided by Delhi Police. Pracha is a number one lawyer in most of the Delhi Riots instances. pic.twitter.com/PnjQJdwKWD
— Fatima Khan (@khanthefatima) December 24, 2020
Pracha claims the Delhi police – managed by Shah’s workplace – raided his workplace on the minister’s behest.
“The raid was solely for the aim of destroying these supplies in order that I can’t expose the position of the house ministry, the Delhi police, and RSS and BJP cadres,” he advised Al Jazeera, referring to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological mentor.
“My assassination can be part of their design,” he mentioned.
Nevertheless, the BJP rubbished Pracha’s claims.
“Folks like Mehmood Pracha have phobia of Modi and Amit Shah. What has Amit Shah to do with such administrative points [police raid]? If he’s clear, what’s he afraid of?” BJP spokesman Harish Khurana mentioned, accusing the lawyer of “making an attempt to deliver himself into limelight”.
Al Jazeera reached out to Nitin D Wakankar, a senior communications official on the residence ministry, however couldn’t get a response.
Victims allege police stress to drop instances
Police accuse Pracha of forging signatures in addition to instigating a person to depose falsely in a Delhi violence case, an allegation he phrases as “baseless”.
“Their [police’s] goal was to attempt to snatch away the proof I’ve on my pc, given by my purchasers. The [pieces of] proof had been in opposition to the Delhi police and RSS-BJP functionaries who had attacked not solely Muslims however all those that protested in opposition to the Citizenship Modification Act,” he mentioned.
Many BJP and RSS leaders had overtly threatened the anti-CAA protesters, who organised peaceable sit-ins throughout the nation final 12 months within the largest protests in opposition to the Modi authorities since he assumed energy six years in the past.
A day after the police raid on Pracha’s workplace situated in New Delhi’s Nizamuddin space, some victims of the Delhi violence held a information convention, accusing the police of forcing them to submit an announcement that the lawyer coerced them to file false complaints.
Pracha says the police’s “threatening behaviour” has additionally led different legal professionals to refuse taking over the instances of the Delhi victims.
“Apart from, 95 p.c of the instances haven’t even been registered by the police,” he claimed.
Tamanna Pankaj, one other advocate offering authorized counsel to the victims of Delhi violence, says police have indicated that legal professionals preventing for the victims are below their fixed watch.
“Some legal professionals are even being concerned within the chargesheets and a few who had been concerned in protests had been additionally known as by the police for interrogation. They’re trapping them on this,” she mentioned.
Many victims of the violence additionally allege that police are asking them to take again their instances or else “face penalties”.
Sahil Pervez, who misplaced his father within the violence, mentioned law enforcement officials investigating the case requested him to withdraw the case.
Pervez’s testimony earlier had led to the arrest of 16 RSS members, who had been charged below varied sections of homicide and rioting.
“They [police] say if you don’t come to phrases with us, we are going to implicate you in different instances. There’s a nexus between the police and the precise perpetrators of the violence. Police discuss to us as if they’re speaking on their [accused] behalf,” the 26-year-old mentioned.
“Native BJP member of parliament Manoj Tiwari visited the households of the 16 accused arrested in reference to my father’s demise in a bid to specific solidarity. In such a state of affairs, how would you count on justice?” Pervez requested.
One other sufferer, Mohammad Nasir, who obtained a bullet harm in his proper eye in the course of the violence, says the police haven’t lodged his first info report (FIR) 10 months after the violence, regardless of orders from a courtroom to take action.
“Quite the opposite, they [police] maintain pressuring me to give up my wrestle for justice,” says the 34-year-old.
Nasir says he was visited by a police officer earlier than the raids had been performed on Pracha’s workplace.
“First, that policeman requested me to alter the lawyer. Once I refused, he mentioned I’d be implicated in different high-profile instances,” he alleged.
The police have been accused by the rights teams and activists of being biased in opposition to the victims and sabotaging the investigation into final 12 months’s violence.
When requested to answer the allegations, the Delhi police remained tightlipped. Assistant Commissioner of Police Anil Mittal, the spokesman for Delhi police, advised Al Jazeera he’s “not conscious” of “such developments”.
‘Accusing Muslims for assaults on Muslims’
Bahadur Abbas, rights activist and basic secretary of New Delhi-based Muslim organisation Anjuman-e-Hyderia, says in “all instances of communal violence in India, witnesses flip hostile due to police stress”.
“However what is exclusive about Delhi riots instances is that the police isn’t solely asking the complainants to withdraw their instances but additionally compelling them to offer statements in opposition to their legal professionals,” Abbas advised Al Jazeera.
“They wish to give a message that no lawyer ought to take up such instances or they gained’t be spared.”
Aasif Mujtaba, one other activist who runs a faculty in Loni – a working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of New Delhi additionally hit by the violence – believes police is indulging in a “multipronged method to indict Muslims” and save the members of right-wing Hindu organisations, who carried out the violence and whose movies and statements had been extensively shared on social media.
“They’re making Muslims as accused for assaults on Muslims,” Mujtaba advised Al Jazeera. “They invoke delicate expenses in opposition to the Hindu accused however put stringent expenses in instances in opposition to Muslims.”
Police arrested a number of activists and younger Muslim leaders regardless of the coronavirus pandemic, accusing them of being a part of a conspiracy to trigger the violence in Delhi.
In its chargesheet filed in September, the Delhi police named 15 individuals. All of them had opposed the CAA and took part within the protests in opposition to the laws.
A few of them have been charged below the Illegal Actions (Prevention) Act (UAPA), a draconian “anti-terror” legislation which permits an individual to be jailed for months with out bail.
The Delhi Minorities Fee, a state-appointed minority physique, final 12 months mentioned the “failure to stop communal violence was not as a consequence of particular person or sporadic breaches, however was a sample of deliberate inaction over a number of days” by the authorities.