Mother of man killed during Delhi riots: ‘Police tortured my boy, killed him… but how can I take them on’

Though an FIR was registered on February 28, it didn’t mention the video.

On July 23, the Delhi High Court, while hearing a petition by Kismatun seeking a court-monitored SIT probe, directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe Faizan’s death, underlining that the policemen’s actions amounted to a “hate crime” that was “motivated and driven by religious bigotry”.

Delhi riot victims Faizan’s mother Kismatun at her Delhi residence, Express Photo by Gajendra Yadav.

Earlier this month, the Delhi Police ordered a departmental inquiry against a head constable and a constable who, they said, were “prima facie” at the incident spot.

Sitting cross-legged on a bed in the family’s three-storeyed house in Northeast Delhi’s Kardampuri locality, where she lives with three sons, three daughters and 11 grandchildren, Kismatun says that four years after Faizan’s death, her heart still aches at the thought of him. “I feel ghabrahat (anxiety) swelling inside my chest. I wasn’t able to sleep for a long time after his death. My chest would hurt and I would feel breathless.”

On February 24, 2020, around 3 pm, Faizan had come home from the chicken shop in Ghazipur Mandi, where he worked, to find his mother missing. He was worried since the neighbourhood was restive after BJP leader Kapil Mishra made an incendiary speech the previous day, asking the Delhi Police to clear the anti-CAA protesters, failing which he threatened to hit the streets.

Express Photo by Gajendra Yadav

The family has pieced together the events of that day from the statements of those who were beaten up with Faizan.

“At Kardampuri Puliya, some 300 metres from our house, some policemen dragged him and a few others to a nearby mohalla clinic (in Yamuna Vihar) and began beating them up,” says Shazia, Faizan’s 36-year-old sister.

The policemen then took Faizan and the others to GTB Hospital, where he recognised a neighbour and asked him to inform his family. “We finally heard from Faizan at 9 pm.”

Kismatun says she rushed to the hospital, but by then, Faizan had already been taken to the Jyoti Nagar police station. “I rushed there and pleaded with the police to allow me to see my son. They sent me away, asking me why I was insisting on seeing my dangai (rioter) son,” Kismatun says.

The next day, the riots spread – men on bikes sped through the lanes of their neighbourhood shouting slogans and shops were on fire – but Kismatun decided to go to the police station again to plead for Faizan’s release.

“I was scared but I had to see my son, bring him home somehow,” says Kismatun. The police turned her away again. “They said they would lock me up if I caused any trouble.”

Later that night, the family was informed that they could bring Faizan back from the Jyoti Nagar police station.

Kismatun says she can’t get her mind off what she saw of Faizan when they got him home from the police station.

“There wasn’t an inch of his body that wasn’t covered in bruises. There were lathi marks all over,” she says, sobbing into her dupatta. “He was in terrible pain… couldn’t lie down or sit up. There were bruises on his neck that made it hard for him to even drink water… he didn’t sleep all night and we took him to a doctor the next morning.”

She recalls how, as Faizan lay on his bed in the LNJP Hospital ward, he gasped for his breath. “I would keep asking how he was… By the end of it, he was sick of my questions. ‘Don’t ask me anything, I have nothing to say,’ he would tell me.” By 10 pm on February 26, Faizan could barely speak. “But he told me, ‘The doctor said my bones aren’t broken. I’ll get better soon, mummy’. Those were his last words,” she says, adding, “After Faizan went, nothing has gone right for me.”

Express Photo by Gajendra Yadav

A string of bad news followed – the untimely death of a daughter and a son-in-law of illnesses, followed by the death by suicide of a newly wedded daughter-in-law. Her youngest son has been in jail over the last two years in a domestic case.

While Faizan’s case was being probed by the Delhi Police’s Crime Branch, in December 2020, Kismatun, represented by senior advocate Vrinda Grover, moved the Delhi High Court seeking a fresh probe by a Special Investigation Team.

The petition in the High Court alleged that Faizan was “targeted and brutally assaulted” by policemen at Kardampuri and subsequently “illegally detained” at the nearby Jyoti Nagar police station on February 24-25, 2020. The petition claimed that he was denied timely critical medical care, resulting in his death at a city hospital.

“Kismatun had Faizan’s blood-soaked clothes yet the police did not take it as evidence. We noticed that the police were not doing their basics. Instead, the Crime Branch went through a lot of footage to see if Faizan had participated in the riots,” Grover told The Indian Express.

Talking about the slow pace of the Crime Branch investigation, Grover points out, “It was only four years later, on May 20 this year, that they obtained orders from the chief metropolitan magistrate to conduct a polygraph test on the then SHO of Jyoti Nagar police station,” Grover told The Indian Express.

In its verdict, the court tore into the police’s version of events, including their submission that all CCTVs at the Jyoti Nagar police station were malfunctioning at the time of the incident, with the judge terming the police’s version as one that “does not inspire confidence”.

Though Kismatun would like to remember Faizan as the boy who mostly kept to himself, raising pigeons on his terrace and rushing off to watch rooster fights in the neighbourhood, she says she would never forget Faizan’s bruised and bloodied body.

“Now when I see the police, nafrat mehsoos hoti hai (I feel repulsed). I want those men punished. They tortured my boy and killed him. They should suffer for what they have done. I have faith in God that we’ll win this,” she says.

But then, there are moments when her resolve falters. “(Advocate) Vrinda madam has assured us that she’ll fight for us. Par kaun police ke khilaaf jayega… mujh mein himmat nahin hai (Who’ll take on the police… I don’t have the courage),” she says.