The Delhi Police Special Cell in its 2,695-page-long charge sheet stated that the conspirators of Delhi riots aimed at "bringing the government of India to its knees and enforcing the withdrawal of Citizenship (Amendment) Act by timing the execution of their conspiracy with the visit of US President, thereby hitting two birds with a single stone."
The charge sheet has been filed against 15 people for allegedly managing protest sites against the CAA in Delhi and executing the conspiracy hatched for the riots in northeast Delhi in February.
The charge sheet claims that since the results of the 2019 Parliamentary elections were declared, the “tone and tenor of the public utterances of the key conspirators of the present case has shown a clear streak of affinity towards violence which had started playing out in their minds,” according to a report by The Indian Express.
Former Congress Councillor Ishrat Jahan, activist Khalid Saifi, suspended AAP Councillor Tahir Hussain, Jamia Millia Islamia Alumni Association President Shifa Ur Rehman and Jamia student Meeran Haider have been named in the charge sheet under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
As per the publication’s report, the charge sheet, signed by DCP (Special Cell) P S Kushwah and ACP (Special Cell) Alok Kumar, explains a “terrorist act” as per Section 15 of the UAPA in this context. "In this case, the use of firearms, petrol bombs… causing death of a police personnel and grievous injuries… with intention to overawe the state and force the central government to withdraw CAA, NRC clearly falls in the definition of terrorist activity," the charge sheet states.
“Causing death of over 50 persons and causing serious injuries to over 500 public persons apart from massive damage to public and private properties by arson and other means would also clearly fall within the definition of terrorist activity… Disruption of supplies and services essential to life of community squarely falls within the ambit of terrorist act,” it reportedly reads.
The report points out that the conspiracy grew in an organic manner from the formation of a group called MSJ (Muslim Students of JNU), “an overtly communal seed that was sown after CAB.” The group, the report filed by the police says, “provided a secular facade and naxal genes of violent resistance to an otherwise radically communal agenda.”
The report also mentions that the “conspirators, by their ingenuity and criminality of thoughts, presented an entirely new dimension to the meaning of ‘hate speech’ — theirs was covered in the sugarcoat of nationalism which hit the sour and sordid truth that it was, in fact, a well-thought out attempt at igniting and reinforcing a pan-Islamic identity.”
Stating that “select group of digital media houses” created media frenzy, the report concluded that the “end objective of all the conspirators was to uproot a lawfully-elected government by sheer use of engineered, vicious and visceral communal violence”.
(With agency inputs)