On Monday, the Delhi High Court stalled the police for the leak of an accused’s purported disclosure statement to the media before filing a charge sheet. The court was hearing a plea filed by Jamia Millia Islamia student Asif Iqbal Tanha in connection with the conspiracy case related to the Delhi riots.
The single-judge bench of Justice Mukta Gupta called the police’s vigilance inquiry report into the matter of Asif as half-baked and a useless piece of paper and also said it is worse than anything that police do in an ordinary theft case. While noticing that only four or five statements had been recorded over a period of four months from September to January, the court pointed out that the file does not even show who conducted the vigilance inquiry.
The judge has asked the special commissioner of police vigilance, Delhi, to appear before the court and posted the matter for further hearing on March 5.
The court said that “your Special CP will come and explain how the allegation of the leak is unsubstantiated, while all the allegations is substantiated. If you can’t do it in your vigilance inquiry, orders will have to be passed by the court themselves. The court added these media leaks need to be controlled for fairness to the accused, fairness to investigation, and the purity of investigation.
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Advocate Amit Mahajan, who appeared for the Delhi Police, said the leak was undesirable and mentioned that even the investigating agency was resentful by it.
However, the court clarified that it was not holding the police solely responsible for the leak.
Last year, the petition filed by Tanha in which he alleged that the police officials leaked his confession statement to the media. He also stated that based on the leaked information, two media outlets – OpIndia and Zee Media carried the news reports claiming his guilt.
On Monday, during the hearing, Tanha’s counsel advocate Siddharth Aggarwal claimed that all accused in the case were facing the same problem; media leaks.
Aggarwal said that a supplementary charge-sheet was filed in the matter and media has passages after passage, whatever be in police’s position, they should come and give assistance to the court.
The court has also asked Aggarwal to state the criminal offences that arise out of the media leak. Tanha was arrested in May by Delhi Police under UAPA. He was accused of rioting during CAA protests.
The police alleged that he is a close associate of Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Meeran Haider and Safoora Zargar who had been the key members of anti-CAA protests and subsequent riots in Delhi.
Several activists and students were arrested by the police, based on these conspiracy charges.