Court grants bail to Delhi riots murder accused

New Delhi: Observing that it is difficult to believe that when one group is agitating against another group, "a person from the same group will shoot a person of his own group", a Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted bail to a man accused in a case of a 30-year-old's murder during last year's north-east Delhi riots. However, a single judge bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait in its judgement also noted that at the same time, possibility of an open fire shot from the same group cannot be ruled out at this stage of the case and the same is the subject matter of trial.

In his order, Justice Kait further noted that at best, the accused, one Zahid, was standing with the mob and participating in the agitation and was pelting stones. "He was not seen carrying any weapons etc. in his hands and in fact, no recovery has been made at his instance," the court order read.

The court also observed that the source of the fire shot is yet unknown and will be established by the prosecution during the trial. During the proceeding, the court was shown a video footage where Zahid could be seen standing just ahead of a wall with a large mob, agitating, shouting slogans and pelting stones on the other side and the 30-year-old deceased was standing right next to him.

As per the court, the video showed that the Zahid's exact position of standing was to the left of the deceased and that too without any weapon in his hand and pelting stones upon other side of the group, "whereas the deceased was hit by a bullet shot in the right side of his dead just above his ear". However, the source of the gun shot cannot be ascertained.

As per case records, the matter pertains to the death of one Mohd. Mudhasir on February 25 at Kabir Nagar. The accused in the case, Zahid, against whom an FIR under sections of murder and rioting was lodged at the Welcome police station, was allegedly a participant of an unlawful assembly with the deceased when a firearm shot had hit the latter on the right side of his head just above the ear and ultimately led to him succumbing to the injuries.

The counsel for the accused, advocate Salim Malik, argued that there was an exorbitant delay of around one month in registration of the FIR in the matter and the police constables who were the witnesses in the case did not make any PCR call when they saw the incident.

He also submitted that both the accused and the deceased were part of the same mob and were standing on the same side and that it was highly unlikely that the former would have an intention to kill the latter and hence, invocation of section 302 of IPC was "bad in law".

However, the public prosecutor in the case told the court that from the analysis of various video footages and the post mortem report, "it became clear that the deceased had sustained injury in the right side on his head right above the ear and since the accused was standing on the deceased's right, the former and other co-accused were implicated in the case.