An FIR has been lodged against six policemen, including the then Station House Officer of Nahtaur police station, Rajesh Singh Solanki, over the death of 20-year-old Mohammad Suleiman in UP’s Bijnor district during the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Satya Prakash Singh, who replaced Solanki as SHO, told The Sunday Express that apart from Solanki, local outpost in-charge Ashish Tomar, constable Mohit Kumar and three other “unidentified” policemen have been named in the FIR filed by Suleiman’s brother Shoaib. Singh said the FIR has been registered under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon) and 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object). Singh said Solanki has now been transferred to the District Crime Record Bureau (DCRB). Bijnor Additional SP (Rural) Vishwajeet Srivastava said Solanki has been transferred from the Nahtaur police station “because he was injured and could not work”. In what was the first admission of firing by the UP Police during the protests, Sanjeev Tyagi, Superintendent of Police, Bijnor, had confirmed to The Sunday Express on December 23 that Suleiman had died after he was shot by constable Mohit Kumar in “self-defence”. “One cartridge was retrieved from Suleiman’s body. The ballistic report confirms that this was shot from the service pistol of Mohit Kumar. Mohit Kumar (constable) also suffered a bullet injury. The bullet taken from Mohit Kumar’s stomach was found to be shot from a country-made weapon,” Tyagi had said. Police had not found any weapon on Suleiman. Suleiman, a final-year under-graduate student who was staying with his maternal uncle in Noida to prepare for the UPSC exams, had come to Nahtaur since he was down with fever, his family said. They had alleged that he was returning from a mosque after offering namaz when the police picked him up, took him into a lane near a madrasa and shot him.
