Field Notes: Telling A Young Muslim That His First Glimpse Of Justice-After 5 Years-Was An Illusion
BETWA SHARMA
It was a difficult call to make.
Calling someone and saying the thing they were celebrating a few weeks ago—well, actually, that had changed—can be difficult and awkward.
Celebrating may not be the right word, but it was a recognition of the first milestone in a long and dreary legal battle for justice.
“I don’t know about it. Really? This is strange,” Mohd Wasim, a 21-year-old Muslim man from a low-income neighbourhood in Delhi, said when I told him the court order he had been waiting for had been stayed.
“It took so long for the FIR to be registered, and now it has been stayed,” said Wasim. “It feels like rubbish.”
When I met Wasim and his family on 5 February, we spoke of how five years after he submitted a complaint, a judicial magistrate had finally ordered a criminal case to be registered against the police officer in charge of the police station where he said he was detained and beaten during a communal riot in northeast Delhi in February 2020.
We didn’t know that an additional session judge had already stayed the magistrate’s order of 18 January on 1 February, four days before I met them.
I only found out later when we were readying to publish my story, and I was trying to find out whether the police had, in fact, registered the FIR against the station house officer of the Jyoti Nagar police station.
A month had passed since the magistrate had given the order.
I was puzzled when the deputy commissioner of police of northeast Delhi told me the matter was “sub judice”—still before the court.
It makes sense now.
After Udhbav Kumar Jain ordered the FIR, SHO Salender Tomar moved for a stay, arguing that an FIR for murder already existed in connection with the incident; a case of murder was registered at the Bhajanpura police station after a Muslim man named Faizan died two days after he was detained at the Jyoti Nagar police station.
Additional sessions judge Sameer Bajpai stayed the order and set the next hearing for 17 April.
Before Wasim was taken to the Jyoti Nagar police station, Wasim and four other Muslim men, which included Faizan, were beaten and forced to sing the national anthem as they lay bloodied and injured on the road on 24 February 2020 near the Kardam Puri bridge.
The incident was captured in videos that went viral during the riot that claimed more than 50 lives, three-quarters of whom were Muslim.
The Delhi High Court has called the incident a “hate crime”, but it is yet to hold anyone accountable for the beatings, detention or Faizan’s death, a result of the police denying him vital medical treatment.
When I phoned Wasim’s lawyer, Mehmood Pracha, about the stay, he said he was not notified about the hearing or the stay or given a chance to oppose the SHO’s contention. He said Wasim’s complaint differed from Faizan’s, and there should be a second FIR.
“I didn't know,” Wasim repeated before giving his father the phone.
His father, Attaullah, said he had heard from Pracha about the stay but had not told Wasim.
It was unclear why.
Speaking very calmly, Attaullah said that he expected the stay.
“I’m not shocked. We know how courts deal with matters,” said Attaullah. “Everyone has the right to the law and will use it.”
“It took us so long to get an FIR. Let’s see how far this goes and how long it takes,” he said.
“It is not our failure. It is the state's failure. What should have taken two days has taken five years. There are cameras inside a police station. There is a register of who is on duty. If they don’t want to investigate, what can we do,” he said.
“We have to wait. We don’t have any other option,” said Attaullah.
Then, in sentences that moved between despair and hope, Attaullah spoke of Congress Party leader Sajjan Kumar, who this week was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh on 1 November 1984 during the anti-Sikh riots.
Kumar, 80, was sentenced to life in 2018 in another murder case.
“If a former MP gets a life sentence after a life sentence, then everything can happen,” he said.
I thought of bringing up Kapil Mishra, the BJP leader who, Wasim said in his complaint, fired gunshots at the anti-CAA protesters while his accomplices allegedly shot at and threw stones at the predominantly Muslim protesters in the presence of police personnel on 24 February 2020.
A day earlier, Mishra was near another anti-CAA protest site at the Jafrabad metro station, flanked by his supporters and the police, telling the police to clear the protesters.
Mishra, 44, recently won a seat in the Delhi assembly from a riot-hit area and is now a minister in the Delhi government, reportedly in charge of seven departments, including law and justice.
I thought of talking to Attaullah about Mishra and how many efforts to hold him accountable had failed while the public and the people went on to reward him.
Instead, I bid him good night.
After all, the timeline the Muslim father had set for getting justice for his son was 40 years. He had no choice in the matter.
Read Betwa Sharma’s full story here.
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