Delhi: “Has anyone been caught? I have heard something is happening,” Kismatun, a 66-year-old Muslim woman, said after returning from casting her vote in the Delhi election on 5 February.
Although she was not quite sure what the developments were, Kismatun said that five years after uniformed policemen brutalised her 23-year-old son in the middle of a communal riot in northeast Delhi in February 2020, things could finally be moving in the murder investigation.
Faizan and four other Muslims who were beaten were also forced to sing the national anthem while they lay on the side of the road near the Mohalla Clinic at the Karadam Puri bridge.
Instead of getting him medical aid, the police illegally detained him at the Jyoti Nagar police station. He died at the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narain Hospital (LNJP) two days later.
Kismatun recalled that two weeks before he died, Faizan, a butcher, had gone to cast his vote in the Delhi election in February 2020.
“He voted first, and then there was a riot. It was only his second time voting,” said Kismatun. “His whole life was ahead of him. He would have probably been married and had a child by now.”
More than 50 people were killed in the Delhi riots. Three-quarters were Muslim.
Although the policemen (not their faces) were captured on video beating the Muslims in daylight, taunting them to show their patriotism, and mocking the protests against a controversial citizenship law, those who perpetrated what has been described by the Delhi High Court as a “hate crime” driven by “religious bigotry” have not yet been identified or prosecuted.
More than six months have passed since the high court transferred the case from the Delhi police crime branch to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
“They beat him because he was Muslim,” said Kismatun. “There is no justice after five years. They are just delaying and delaying.”
When we spoke with her on 5 February, Kismatun said that not too long ago, three officers from the CBI visited her at her home and took down her statement again. Her younger son, Wasim, too, had been called to give his statement.
Vrinda Grover, a leading human rights lawyer representing Kismatun, said they were verifying old statements in the matter. “There seems to be some movement. Now, whether that movement is on paper or otherwise, we don’t know.”
“Madame,” Kismatun said, referring to Grover, “has won from the small police officers (Delhi police). Now she will win from the big ones (CBI) as well.”
“Now I think the matter has gone to the good police (CBI),” she said. “I have hope that I will get justice.”
‘Impunity For Targeting Muslim Men’
Previously, Kismatun had spoken of how badly Faizan was beaten and the near-death state he was in when he was finally released from the Jyoti Nagar police station on the night of 25 February.
Kismatun said she had tried to get Faizan out on the night of 24 February and the morning of the 25th, but the police shooed her away, only letting him out when a local Muslim politician from the Aam Aadmi Party intervened.
Kismatun remembered using a scissor to remove Faizan’s torn and bloodied clothes from his battered body. She remembered him struggling to breathe, trying to take big gulps of air, and saying, “Ammi, everything is hurting. Please get me treatment.”
Faizan died on 26 February 2020 at the LNJP hospital. Two days later, on 28 February, the police registered a murder case against “unknown persons” at the Bhajanpura police station.
The post-mortem report of 29 February prepared by the LNJP hospital said that Faizan died due to cerebral injury associated with multiple blunt injuries over the body. The injuries were caused by blunt force over two or three days.
Kismatun said that after the assault and some cursory medical treatment at the Guru Teg Bahadur hospital immediately after, the police illegally detained him for two days instead of getting him the proper medical treatment and that led to his death.
In June 2020, two applications filed before a magistrate on behalf of Kismatum sought copies of the post-mortem report and asked that necessary documents, including the call detail records (CDRs) and the duty register of police personnel, be preserved for investigation.
After ten months without the police identifying the perpetrators, Kismatun petitioned the Delhi High Court on 17 December 2020 for a court-monitored investigation into the assault by court-appointed investigators.
“The partisan, compromised, lackadaisical, knowingly slow and ineffective pace of investigation does not inspire confidence and suggests that the perpetrators, being men in uniform, are being shielded,” her petition said.
After three and a half more years of inaction, the high court transferred the investigation from the Delhi crime branch to the Central Bureau of Investigation in July 2024.
More than six months have passed without the identification and arrest of the culprits.
“The video laid bare that communal bias had crept into the law enforcement agency,” said Grover, Kismatun’s lawyer.
“Five years later, no policeman has been identified or arrested. Impunity for targeting Muslim men in the course of their duty stands emboldened,” said Grover. “The brazen failure of the police leadership to institute any corrective measures after such a blatant display of communal conduct by men in uniform has serious implications for our society.”
“In my view, the issue concerns not only Kismatun’s quest for justice for her son Faizan but whether we are seeing a pattern where a claim to the protection of the law and securing accountability of perpetrators
will be calibrated according to the religious identity of the citizen,” she said. “The right to truth and justice are integral features of citizenship.”
What The Police Said
The Delhi crime branch recorded Kismatun’s statement and seized Faizan’s torn and bloodstained clothes on 18 March 2020, almost a month after the incident.
In the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown, Kausar Ali, one of the five Muslim men assaulted on the road, sent his statement via WhatsApp on 24 March 2020, a month after the incident.
When Kismatun filed the petition before the Delhi High Court in December 2020, the petition said Ali’s clothes had yet to be seized.
In response to Kismatun’s petition for preserving the CDRs and the duty register, the police status report filed on 22 July 2020 said the records were “irrelevant” and “not warranted” for the purposes of the investigation in this case.
Furthermore, the report said the CCTV cameras at the Jyoti Nagar police station were not working on the day of the incident, and no government or privately installed CCTV was found in the area where Faizan was assaulted.
On the allegation of illegally detaining Faizan and other Muslims at the Jyoti Nagar police station, the report said that the three Muslims—Faizan, Wasim and Rafique—did not want to go home because of the rioting and were permitted to stay at the police station and handed over to their parents.
‘A Right To Know The Truth’
Kismatun’s petition questioned the police's claim that there was no government or private CCTV footage.
Given that the five Muslims were briefly taken to the hospital after they were assaulted near the bridge and they were taken in a police vehicle, every police vehicle has its own log, including the names and designations of the officers using the vehicle and the route taken.
“The occupants of this gypsy vehicle can also provide clear leads about the identity of the policemen involved in the assault and beating of Faizan and others,” said the petition.
The petition said the duty roster would reveal the names of the policemen stationed at the Jyoti Nagar police station on 24 February 2020 and 25 February 2020 and the police official in charge when Faizan was illegally detained and not released to his mother on the night of 24 February and 25th morning.
“Respondents have not proceeded against the said police personnel, whose names and identities are known and readily verifiable,” said the petition.
The petition said the lack of CCTV footage despite CCTV cameras installed at Jyoti Nagar police station “ought to lead to a strong suspicion of wrongdoing against police officers stationed there,” their claim that CCTV cameras should have been independently probed and verified, but no such steps were taken.
The petition said that Kismatun’s statement that she went to the police station twice—on the night of 24 February 2020 and on 25 February 2020—discredited the police claim that he stayed at the police station voluntarily and was released only on 25 February 2020 because his family did not come to the police station earlier.
The mother of the deceased, the petition said, “has a right to know the truth about what happened to her son and by whom and how he was assaulted, illegally detained and killed”.
Mohd Wasim’s Case
“After a while, Faizan was also brought to the police station who was howling in pain,” is a line in the complaint of Mohd Wasim, one of the five Muslims who the police beat on the Kardampuri bridge.
In addition to describing the assault at the bridge, Wasim, who was 17 at the time of the incident, also spoke of the alleged role of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kapil Mishra, who he said he was leading the rioters and firing gunshots the Muslims who were protesting against the citizenship law in the presence of the police.
Wasim said that after they were assaulted at the bridge, policemen, including the station house officer (SHO) of the Jyoti Nagar Police Station, also beat him and other Muslims inside the station.
In the days and weeks that followed, Wasim alleged, the SHO harassed, threatened and forced him to give a false account to news channels.
In an order on 18 January 2025, judicial magistrate Udbhav Kumar Jain ordered an FIR to be registered against the then SHO of the Jyoti Nagar police station.
For action against Mishra, the magistrate said that Wasim should approach the courts designated for cases against sitting, former, and parliament and legislative assembly members.
The magistrate said the inquiry officer who had prepared the “action taken report” (ATR) in the matter had “saved the alleged accused (SHO) by merely denying the allegations” and that the “ATR is totally silent” about Mishra, whose “hate crimes” were in the public domain.
“He clearly incited the people of one community to commit a crime against the other community, but he is running scot-free, and no case. has been registered against him,” the magistrate said about Mishra.
The magistrate said that prima facie cognisable offences—grave crimes where arrest can be made without a warrant—were made against Mishra, and the police were required to register an FIR and investigate the matter.
The magistrate said the investigating officer either failed to make an inquiry against Mishra or tried to cover up the allegations against the accused.
After the magistrate passed an order for registering an FIR against the SHO on 18 January 2025, SHO Salender Tomar filed a revision in the district court arguing that an FIR for murder registered at the Bhajanpur police station after Faizan’s death already existed in the matter and two FIRs could not be registered for the same incident and that special sanction was needed to register cases against police personnel.
In the order, the magistrate said that the Bhajanpur FIR was related to the larger rioting and sanction was needed because the offences committed did not fall within the ambit of them discharging their official duties.
On 1 February, additional sessions judge Sameer Bajpai stayed the order for an FIR against the SHO and scheduled the next hearing for 17 April.
On 8 February, Mishra won the riot-affected Karawal Nagar constituency in northeast Delhi, defeating the Aam Aadmi Party candidate in the Delhi assembly election by more than 23,000 votes.
Mishra was sworn in as a cabinet minister in the new BJP-led government on 20 February.
‘I Have Not Left The Field’
When we spoke with her about her case on 5 February, the day Delhi voted, Kismatun had said, “Poor people get treated like this, and we are Muslim, but I’m still fighting. I have not left the field. How can I?”
Sitting in a larger and more airy room than the one we found her in when we visited in January 2021, Kismatun said she had used the Rs 10 lakh that she received as compensation from the Delhi government for Faizan’s death to add to two floors to her house in Kardampuri. Now, many of her children and their families lived with her.
The mother of nine, a seamstress whose husband died in a road accident in the year 2000, has seven surviving children.
As for the deeply divisive and violent strain of Islamophobia which had come to define the country since the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power at the centre in 2014, Shazia, Kismatun’s daughter, said the anti-Muslim hate was now entrenched.
“The division has become permanent,” said Shazia. “Muslims want to live in their own colonies with their people. Hindus want to do the same.”
Referring to an incident in August last year when a Muslim man with disabilities died after he was beaten for picking up a banana placed before a Hindu idol in a temple in a Delhi neighbourhood, Kismatun said, “You are always scared when you leave your house and neighbourhood.”
Recalling how Kardampuri was a “jungle” when she moved there from neighbouring Seelampur around the time Indira Gandhi was assassinated on 31 October 1984, Kismatun said, “All my children are born here. This is my city. This is my country. I will always vote. That is my right.”
(Betwa Sharma is managing editor of Article 14.)
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