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More than eight months to a year after hundreds of Muslim women gathered under a Delhi metro station to protest India’s citizenship law in February 2020, a secret police informer claimed to have identified 13 of them without any explanation of how he did it. The more or less identical answers the police recorded in response to the questionnaire they gave the women suggest they accused them in a rioting case—one of many cases with specious evidence—to pin the Delhi riots on the anti-CAA protests and get statements against three women activists. Meanwhile, pleas to register cases against the BJP leaders who gave provocative speeches at the time remain pending.
Delhi: According to a case registered against 13 Muslim women who the Delhi police say joined a protest in February 2020 under the Jafrabad metro station in the northeast of the city, a secret informant started visiting a place called the Peeli Mitti ground in October 2020 and began identifying them.
When questioned about the protest staged from 22 to 24 February, the Muslim women from poor neighbourhoods around the metro station gave more or less identical answers, saying that they were misled about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019 by Gulfisha Fatima, Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, three young women who the Delhi police have accused of using the protests against the CAA as a front for fomenting the Delhi riots that raged from 23 to 25 February 2020.
The Muslim women named no one else from the gathering of 300 to 400 people who sat and shouted slogans and proceeded to block the 66 Foota road to Seelampur in the presence of police personnel.
A reading of the case suggests the police went looking for these women—mostly homemakers and seamstresses—eight months to a year after the protests to get statements against Fatima, an MBA from the Institute of Management Education in Ghaziabad, Kalita and Narwal, graduate students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) at the time, with a singular focus on pinning the riots on the anti-CAA protests.
The three were co-accused in the Jafrabad roadblock case, and they were co-accused in the Delhi riots conspiracy case, where the police said anti-CAA protests were a front for planning the riots and the Jafrabad roadblock was the immediate trigger.
Of the 53 people killed in the riots, three-quarters were Muslim. Of the 20 people accused in the conspiracy case of planning the riots, 18 are Muslim. Kalita and Narwal were the two Hindus.
This is the latest Delhi riots case we have reported that appears to be built on specious evidence. We have shown the Delhi riots conspiracy case is riddled with inconsistencies and conjectures. Last month, we reported how a Delhi police investigator framed nine Muslim men for an attack on a Muslim shop by a Hindu mob.
“Absolutely evasive”, lackadaisical”, “callous”, “casual”, “farcical,” “painful to see,” and “misusing the judicial system” are some of the things that Delhi judges have said about the police investigation into the riots. However, the judges have not held any police personnel responsible for the demonstrably biased and poor quality of investigation.
A Fixed Position
A kilometre from the protest site at the Jafrabad metro station, Kapil Mishra, a leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), addressed a gathering opposing the anti-CAA protests on 23 February and gave the police an ultimatum to clear the roads before former US president Donald Trump, who was on an official visit to India, left. Otherwise, Mishra and his supporters would take to the streets.
However, the police did not register a case against Mishra, even though a division bench of the Delhi High Court led by Justice S Muralidhar played his speech in court on 26 February 2020 for the deputy commissioner of police and the solicitor general, the country’s second-most senior law officer.
Muralidhar said that he was “really amazed at the state of affairs of the Delhi police”, giving them a day to look at hate speeches made by BJP leaders in January and February 2020 and decide whether to register cases.
In addition to Mishra, there was a twice-elected member of parliament from west Delhi, the minister for information and broadcasting then, and a member of the legislative assembly from east Delhi.
“Why shouldn’t there be an FIR against these four BJP leaders…including union minister, MP and MLA?” said Justice Muralidhar. “Why aren’t you registering [an FIR] for these speeches?”
That same day, Justice Murlidhar was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court after a late-night notification that the central government had approved his transfer recommended by the Supreme Court collegium on 12 February.
In the aftermath of the riots, however, the police stuck to the position that the anti-CAA protests were the cause of the Delhi riots.
One year after the riots, the Wire reported that Hindu extremists, including Deepak Singh Hindu, founder of ‘Hindu Force’, Ankit Tiwari, a BJP volunteer and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) member, and Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati, a godman from Ghaziabad, made hateful and inflammatory speeches.
On the morning of 23 February, Deepak Singh Hindu said, “The whole of Delhi is being turned into Shaheen Bagh. And now Jafrabad in north-east Delhi has been made into a Shaheen Bagh. Thousands of people with jihadi mindset have come onto the roads. But instead of [us] watching this like hijdas (eunuchs), it is better to die as men, and I, Deepak Singh Hindu, will take this war to its conclusion. Please come to Maujpur Chowk at 2:30 pm because if Deepak Singh Hindu goes there alone, it will be a moment for you to die of shame. My appeal to you is that you reach Maujpur Chowk in large numbers.”
The Anti-CAA Protest
The hundreds of people who gathered under the Jafrabad metro station and blocked the road came after two months of anti-CAA protests in which the demonstrations had spread to many cities, but the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government remained unmoved.
The protests were against a law that paved the way for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who entered illegally to get Indian citizenship but excluded Muslims. The Modi government did not see Muslims as minorities fleeing religious persecution from Islamic countries. The Act, however, makes no mention of persecution as a criterion and does not apply to Hindus from Sri Lanka or Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.
The anti-CAA protests were also against the potential rollout of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a survey to identify illegal immigrants. This exercise has been carried out in the northeastern state of Assam, which borders Bangladesh. In 2019, home minister Amit Shah repeatedly said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government would conduct a nationwide survey.
the CAA and NRC read together made Indian Muslims very nervous, especially those who felt they would not be able to show the required documents to prove their citizenship.
Their fears grew amid reports that the government was building more detention centres for illegal immigrants in Assam and elsewhere in the country.
The Jafrabad Case
Around 300 to 400 people, including Muslim women, many veiled, attended the anti-CAA protest under the Jafrabad metro station from 22 February to 24 February in the presence of the police personnel and staged a sit-in that blocked the road in the presence of the police.
FIR 48/2020 of Jafrabad police station was registered close to seven in the evening on 24 February, two days after the start of the protest. It did not describe any kind of violence on the part of the protesters. However, it invoked crimes like rioting and using criminal force to deter a public servant from discharge of public duty under the Indian Penal Code, 1860.
The police later added graver sections like criminal conspiracy and the promotion of disharmony, enmity between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes.
The Delhi police first accused 11 people in the Jafrabad case, including Kalita, Narwal, Fatima, and another student activist Safoora Zargar. They were arrested and granted bail in the Jafrabad case but remained behind bars in the Delhi riots conspiracy case, which invoked terrorism sections under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967.
More than eight months to a year after the Jafrabad protest, 15 Muslims, including 13 Muslim women, were accused in the case. They were questioned but not arrested.
The Secret Informer
As per the police case, the women were identified after a secret informer started going to Peeli Mitti ground every two to three weeks from 30 October 2020 to 1 January 2021, more than eight months to a year after the Jafrabad protest.
In every such visit to the Peeli Mitti ground, the secret informer identified two or three Muslim women who participated in the protest.
The chargesheet did not explain how the secret informer identified the Muslim women eight months later: did he see them at the protest and then saw a few of them walking around in pairs at the Peeli Mitti ground every couple of weeks from October to January?
Many of the Muslim protesters under the Jafrabad metro station were veiled.
A secret informer is someone who would not be cross-examined in the trial.
The FIR said there was a crowd of 300 to 400 people at Jafrabad. It is unclear why the secret informer’s search went no further than these 13 Muslim women.
Blaming Fatima
The accused women, homemakers, seamstresses and a factory worker between the ages of 28 and 73 filled out a questionnaire with a variety of questions.
Some of these questions:
-Were you part of the protest at the Jafrabad metro station?
-Did you go on your own, or did someone call you?
-If someone, who, what do you know about the “CAA-NRC bill”
-Do you feel it can harm you
-What was the reason behind the protest?
Most of the answers recorded from the end of October to January mirrored each other.
When asked whether they felt the CAA-NRC could harm them, many answers went like this, “Initially, I thought something bad would happen, but now I realise it was all a rumour.”
Most of them said that Gulfisha Fatima was leading the protest and instigated the crowd by saying that the government would use the CAA and NRC to throw out Muslims. The protesters raised slogans against the government while shouting “Azaadi, Azaadi” (freedom) and blocking the road.
“Gulfisha was instigating women’s against the government and the CAA/NRC.”
“Gulfisha would go door to door and say that the government has got a law to throw Muslims out of the country.”
Three women who answered on 1 January 2021 also named Narwal and Kalita, in addition to Fatima.
“Natasha, Gulfisha, Devangana said we would have to show papers from 60 years ago, or we would be thrown in prison. I’m not well educated, so they fooled me”
“Natasha, Gulfisha, and Devangana went into the lanes and told women to come for the protest, and that is why I went to the metro station.”
Four Years Behind Bars
Kalita, who was pursuing an MPhil at the Centre of Women’s Studies in JNU at the time, and Narwal, who was pursuing a PhD at the Centre for Historical Studies JNU, received bail in the Jafrabad case in the months after it was registered on 24 February 2020. Still, they remained jailed for another year until the Delhi High Court granted them bail in the Delhi riots conspiracy case.
While granting bail to Narwal and Kalita after finding no prima facie evidence against them, the high court said the police had blurred the lines between the right to protest and terrorism.
While Fatima was granted bail in the Jafrabad case in May 2020, she remains jailed in the conspiracy case. Her bail plea, pending in the Delhi High Court since May 2022, has been listed 64 times before four benches of judges.
Fatima, who did her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Urdu at Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College before pursuing an MBA, was 28 years old when she was arrested.
In August 2020, four months after she was arrested, Fatima’s brother had said, “We know that with the UAPA, it would take time, six months or one year, before she gets out.”
No Case Against BJP Leaders
The video of Mishra making his speech at Maujpur was submitted as part of the Jafrabad case chargesheet in October 2020, but the police did not pursue that line of investigation.
Addressing a gathering, Mishra had said, “They want Delhi to continue to be on fire. That is why they have blocked the roads and created a riot-like atmosphere.”
Calling attention to the police officer standing beside him while speaking to the men gathered around him, Mishra said, “I’m saying this on behalf of you all. We are silently leaving until Trump departs, but after that, we will not listen to you (police) if the roads are not cleared. Before Trump leaves, we request you to clear Jafrabad and Chandbagh, or we will come on the roads.”
Mishra, a former minister of Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government—sacked in 2017 for alleged “anti-party activities” and joined the BJP in 2019—was appointed the minister of its Delhi unit in August 2023.
On 26 February 2020, in response to a petition by peace activist Harsh Mander, the Delhi High Court bench of Justice Murlidhar and Justice Talwant Singh ordered the Delhi police to examine the videos of the hate speeches made by Mishra and three other BJP leaders and decide whether they wanted to register cases.
While campaigning on 27 January 2020 for the Delhi election in February, Anurag Thakur, a five-time Lok Sabha member of Parliament from Himachal Pradesh, who served as the minister for information and broadcasting in the BJP government at the time, said, “Goli maaro salon ko (shoot them)” at a rally and the crowd responded by saying, desh ke gadaaron ko” (the traitors to the country).
The next day, Parvesh Verma, a twice-elected BJP MP from West Delhi, said those gathered at the Shaheen Bagh protest site “would enter your houses, rape your sisters and daughters” and that if the BJP were elected, they would clear all mosques on government land within a month.
On 25 February 2020, Abhay Verma, a member of the legislative assembly from Laxmi Nagar in east Delhi, led a march where people shouted, “Police ke hatyaaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko (Shoot the people who murdered the policeman), referring to the killing of head constable Ratan Lal in the riots, and they shouted, “Jo Hindu hit ki baat karega, woh hi desh par raj karega” (Only those who speak of Hindu welfare will rule the country).
After Justice Murlidhar was transferred, Mander’s petition was heard by a division bench on 27 February by D N Patel, the chief justice of Delhi Hight Court at the time. The solicitor general, Tushar Mehta, said the police had examined the videos and decided to defer registering FIRs ordered by Justice Murlidhar because “hurried intervention may not be conducive.”
The matter was listed for 13 April, more than six weeks later.
On 14 July 2020, the Delhi police filed an affidavit informing the Delhi High Court they had found no evidence of any role played by the BJP leaders Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma in instigating or participating in the Delhi riots. The police said they were examining the speeches, and an FIR would be filed if any link to the riots was found.
“…no fresh FIR is warranted at this stage,” they said.
No Action Against Kapil Mishra
After withdrawing his petition from the Delhi High Court, Mander approached the Patiala district court for registering an FIR against Mishra on 15 January 2021.
More than three and half years and 22 hearings later, the matter is still pending.
When it was last heard on 7 June 2024, metropolitan magistrate Animesh Bhaskar Mani Tripathi noted that a report was received from the office of the DCP (deputy commissioner of police) and scheduled the next hearing after three months—2 September 2024.
“The Kapil Mishra story started even while the fires of violence were still burning when I filed a petition in the Delhi High Court…” said Mander. “Famously, the petition was heard by Justice Murlidhar and defended by Tushar Mehta, and Mehta said an FIR would be filed at the right time. The ‘right time’ for the FIR has still not come more than four years later.”
In the chargesheet for the Delhi riots conspiracy case they filed in September 2020, the Delhi police said they had questioned Mishra on 28 July 2020.
Mishra said that when he went to Maujpur Chowk, he called for an end to the roadblock caused by the anti-CAA protesters. “Muslims have created an atmosphere of terror and fear there,” he told the police.
When questioned about his ultimatum to the police, Mishra said that he meant that if the police did not clear the roads of the anti-CAA protesters, he would also stage a sit-in.
In an interview with the Wire in February 2021, Mishra said, “I’m proud of what I said on 23 February, and if it happens like that again, I will do that again.”
Mishra also said there was nothing wrong with the slogans he issued on 19 December 2019, calling for “shooting the traitors” of JNU, Jamia, and Aligarh Muslim University, where students were protesting the CAA.
Mishra was appointed vice president of Delhi’s BJP unit in August 2023.
Free: Anurag Thakur & Parvesh Verma
Brinda Karat and Anil Tiwari, Communist Party of India (CPI-M) leaders, made a complaint against Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma to the commissioner of police on 29 January 2020, asking for the registration of an FIR.
On 31 January 2020, they sent another letter to the commissioner saying that police inaction over their complaint had led to an incident where an armed man shot at protesting students. On 2 February 2020, they wrote to the station house officer of the Parliament Street police station to immediately file an FIR.
On 5 February 2020, they moved the court of the additional chief metropolitan magistrate, Rouse Avenue, under section 190 of the Criminal Procedure Code to register an FIR under section 156 (3) of the CrPC. The police told the court they found no cognisable offence was committed.
In August 2020, the court dismissed their plea on the grounds that under section 196 of the CrPC government sanction was needed for the court to order registering an FIR for sections 153A (promoting enmity between groups), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings), and 505 (1)—statements conducive to public mischief, and under section 197 government sanction was needed to register an FIR against public servants. In June 2022, the Delhi High Court upheld the order.
“They want to set a precedent for getting government sanction to register an FIR. We have appealed against that,” said Karat.
A division bench comprising Justices K M Joseph and B V Nagarathna of the Supreme Court orally observed in April 2023 that the lower court’s position may not be correct.
Justice Joseph observed that the “goli maaro” chant was “certainly not said in terms of medical prescription”.
The case was adjourned for a third time on 4 September 2023 to 3 October. It has not been heard since.
Thakur was dropped from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet after the 2024 election. Verma was not given a BJP ticket to contest the election.
Betwa Sharma
Betwa Sharma is the managing editor of Article 14. She was previously the politics editor at HuffPost India and the New York/United Nations correspondent for the Press Trust of India.