2020 Delhi riots: Court refuses to provide accused full CCTV footage, police's WhatsApp chats

New Delhi, Aug 8 (IANS) A Delhi court has disposed of an application moved by Devangana Kalita, an accused in the 2020 North-East Delhi riots case, seeking copies of documents or relevant materials relied upon by the prosecution free of cost without any delay.

The court declined Kalita's plea as it refused to provide the complete CCTV footage related to the riots area, and chats from the WhatsApp groups of police officials.

It may be noted that it is a case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) that alleges a larger conspiracy behind the violence.

Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Amitabh Rawat considered the ongoing investigation into individual riots cases and their nature. He agreed with the Delhi Police's stance that providing the entire relevant footage and chats to Kalita, as supplied to the accused in individual cases, was unnecessary for a UAPA case.

Special public prosecutor Amit Prasad said that relevant chats concerning the larger conspiracy case had been given to Kalita, except for the chats from the official police WhatsApp groups containing sensitive or privileged information. 

The court observed: “This court had earlier ordered that supply of the complete chats of entire WhatsApp group to all accused persons but on the aspect of official/police WhatsApp group chats, it contains information about police officials and their activities and the relevant chats/relied upon have been filed and supplied.”

ASJ Rawat added: "In my view, supply of the entire chats of the said group is not required under Section 207 of Cr.P.C. The same would hold for other police WhatsApp groups.”

Earlier, the court had ordered that Kalita be provided with various documents, including chats from WhatsApp groups like DPSG, JCC, MSJ and CAB, along with documents related to AAZMI, which were kept sealed.

"In view of the above discussion, the aspect of compliance under Section 207 of Cr.P.C of accused Devangana Kalita stands disposed of,” the court said.

The court also ordered day-to-day hearing on the issue of framing charges against the accused persons in the case.

The court’s decision came after the stage of compliance under Section 207 of Cr.P.C in respect of all the chargesheeted accused persons, which completed on August 5, nearly three years after the proceedings in the case began in September 2020 with the filing of the first charge sheet.

“…list the matter for arguments on the point of charge on 11.09.2023 onwards for day to day hearing. Ld. Special Public Prosecutor shall begin the arguments on 11.09.2023,” the court said.

On April 5, compliance proceedings under Section 207 of CrPC were concluded for 17 accused individuals, excluding Kalita. 

The accused persons in this case include Tahir Hussain, Umar Khalid, Khalid Saifi, Isharat Jahan, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, Shifa-Ur-Rehman, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Shadab Ahmed, Tasleem Ahmed, Saleem Malik, Mohd. Saleem Khan, Athar Khan, Safoora Zargar, Sharjeel Imam, Faizan Khan, and Natasha Narwal.