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Journalism of Courage
This is an archive article published on June 11, 2025
2 years after man’s death in Delhi Police custody, magistrate court orders probe
Delhi Police had refused to register an FIR in connection with the man's death, according to his wife's petition in the Northwest Delhi magistrate court.
According to Setara Bibi, her husband Sheikh Sadat died while in the custody of the Subhash Place police between July 22 and 23, 2023. (Representational Photo)
A Delhi court on May 28 ordered an investigation into a man’s alleged custodial death after his wife claimed that police had refused to register an FIR over his death even after more than seven months. The court called for a “thorough investigation to unearth the entire scenario”.
According to Setara Bibi, her husband Sheikh Sadat died while in the custody of the Subhash Place police between July 22 and 23, 2023. He was picked up by the police along with four others. While the others were sent to judicial custody after being produced before a magistrate, Sadat was remanded in police custody.
Bibi, in her application before the magistrate court, submitted that Sadat’s body had black and blue marks of beatings on his back and chest and that his hands and legs were swollen. Another co-accused’s wife, Sahana Khatoon, informed Bibi that Sadat had complained of police beating and that he was beaten because he had refused to pay the police extortion money. Khatoon spoke to Sadat on the morning of July 22, according to Bibi.
Bibi filed an application seeking a status report into the matter and the DCP concerned, in an action-taken report on December 15, 2023, five months after the incident, responded that a judicial inquiry was pending and that no FIR had been registered. She had subsequently written to the DCP seeking the registration of FIR, but to no avail, compelling her to move court.
An inquest report by a magistrate court had opined that as it appeared that the cause of Sadat’s death was due to coronary artery disease, “there is no suspicion of the death of the deceased being homicide or suicidal”.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Vasundhra Chhaunkar of Northwest Delhi district, however, found a prima facie case of cognisable offence and stated, “As per the allegations levelled as well as the photographs available on record, including the video footage as well…(as) the pictures of the deceased from the mortuary…, there were injury marks on the entire upper back and the lower back of the deceased.”
“Though the inquest report is on record, the same can be considered at the appropriate stage. To dismiss the present application only on the basis of the present inquest report will not serve the purpose of justice, where the complainant is not in a capacity to record or collect extensive evidence. The Court is of the view that prima facie a cognisable offence has been committed and a thorough investigation into the matter is required to unearth the entire scenario as well as to record the statement of all of the possible witnesses. Also, an investigation on technical aspects is required qua the availability of CCTV footages, qua the attempts made to preserve the same and qua the other possible inputs,” the court reasoned while allowing Bibi’s application.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
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