2020 Delhi riots: Court acquits 7, says witness gave contradictory statements

“I find that there is a big mishap in the case of prosecution and evidence brought on the record, in respect to the time of the incident. The benefit of such contradictions in the story of prosecution has to go in favour of the accused persons,” said Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala of Karkardooma courts.

Advocate Rakshpal Singh, representing the accused, denied all allegations against them, stating that they were falsely arrested only to work out this case.

The court also said that a video recording provided by the sole witness who claimed to have seen the accused during the incident could not be looked at as a piece of evidence since it wasn’t examined for any kind of manipulation.

The witness sent the video evidence to the IO and he claimed that he had forwarded it to FSL for examination. However, the court found that there was no FSL report of the examination of the video on record.

The FIR in this case was registered in March 2020 at Gokulpuri police station wherein the complainant, Salman Malik, alleged that a mob of rioters looted and set his shop on fire due to which he suffered losses of up to Rs 5 lakh.