The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a plea seeking immediate registration of FIR against BJP leaders Anurag Thakur, Kapil Mishra and others for their apparent hate speeches that triggered violence in North-east Delhi killing 46 people. The court is reportedly going to hear the matter on 4 March.
Supreme Court agrees to hear Delhi violence plea seeking FIR
Arguing vehemently for an urgent hearing, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves said, “The urgency is that 5 or 6 personalities are going around encouraging it.”
The plea sought an early listing of the matter before the SC court bench headed by the Chief Justice SA Bobde. However, he said, “We are not equipped to prevent these things from happening. We can only deal with the situation after that. This is a kind of pressure on us. We can’t handle so much pressure.”
Gonsalves represented the public interest litigation (PIL) on behalf of a group of survivors and victims of Delhi riots.
The petition seeks series of directions from the court including immediate FIR against BJP leaders Kapil Mishra, Parvesh Verma, Anurag Thakur, Abhay Verma and all others who indulged in hate speech, rioting, murder, and arson.
It has also sought setting up a special investigative team with officers from outside Delhi to probe into the riots. The PIL also seeks to appoint a committee headed by a retired judge to launch a probe against the police persons involved. The petition also requested the army to be called in to maintain law and order.
Prayers in the petition include exemplary compensation to all victims, making public the full list of persons detained by police and paramilitary, preserving all CCTV footage of riot-affected areas and immediate release of postmortem reports.
Last Wednesday, the High Court bench headed by S Muralidhar had told the Delhi Police that there should be no delay in registering FIRs over the hate speeches, urging the cops to “seriously consider consequences” of not doing so. The two-judge bench had also played the hate speech videos in court, and Justice Muralidharan said the court “would not allow another 1984 scenario”.
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