Content on 'Kattar Hindu Ekta' group highly communal: Court

New Delhi: Holding that the language used in the WhatsApp group "Kattar Hindu Ekta" was "highly communal" in nature and clearly promoting "disharmony" towards a particular community, a Delhi court has dismissed the bail plea of a 24-year-old man,who was allegedly in touch with members of the group, and has been accused of killing one Aamin during last year's communal carnage in north-east Delhi.

In an order dated June 4, Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Yadav perused the chats of the said online group, presented by the prosecution, which was allegedly used by several people to plan and conspire killings of Muslims during the riots, and observed that the chat(s)/messages forwarded in the said WhatsApp group and the language used therein appears to be "highly communal in nature and clearly promoting disharmony, enmity and feelings of hatred towards the members of a particular community".

Significantly, as per transcripts of the chat group, reported last year by Millennium Post, members of the group regularly posted videos of BJP leader Kapil Mishra and told others to listen to Mishra's message as a call to action "in defense of Hindus". In the 48 hours or so after creating the group, members had disclosed and boasted about the killings of as many as 20 Muslims in their areas.

Moreover, denying bail to the accused, one Ankit Chaudhary, the court stated that at this stage of the case, there was enough material on record to presume that the accused was very well present at the spot/scene of crime and was "exhorting the rioters of a particular community, who on his instigation could have killed anybody".

As per case records, Chaudhary is accused in the murder of one Aamin whose body was found in the Bhagirathi Vihar Nala on February 25 last year.

As per the Special Public Prosecutor Rajeev Krishan Sharma, analysis of the call detail records (CDR) of the accused showed that he was present at the scene of crime on the day of the incident.

He further argued that Chaudhary was in touch with other co-accused persons who were members of the "Kattar Hindu Ekta" which was created on the intervening night of February 24 and 25 and where more than a 100 persons were added.

The prosecution further alleged that the group chats were highly communal in nature and that the accused in connivance with co-accused persons committed the murder of as many as nine Muslims following which they threw their bodies in the "nallah" to destroy the evidence.

The investigation in the case took off after these nine bodies were recovered from the Bhagirathi Vihar in different stages of decomposition, in the days after the rioting ended.

Meanwhile, the accused, represented by advocates Pradeep Teotia and Jitender Bakshi, argued that the public witnesses in the case were "planted" and that there was a massive delay in their recording of statements. They also submitted that the accused has been falsely implicated in eight other murder cases and is a victim of an "arbitrary" and "autocratic investigation".