The Delhi High Court on Tuesday dismissed the appeals of five men convicted over the killing of 22-year-old Monish during the February 2020 North-East Delhi riots, upholding their conviction and seven-year jail terms. Justice Madhu Jain upheld the conviction of Aman Kashyap, Devinder Kumar, Pradeep Rai, Ashish alias Goli and Arun Kumar for rioting and culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Source: ANI via LatestLY
The five had challenged the trial court's judgment of conviction dated November 30, 2024, and its sentencing order of January 13, 2025, passed by the Additional Sessions Judge-03, North-East District, at Karkardooma Courts in Sessions Case No. 199/2021, arising out of FIR No. 87/2020 registered at Dayalpur police station. The trial court had sentenced them to one year of simple imprisonment under Section 148 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and seven years of rigorous imprisonment, along with a fine of Rs 30,000, under Section 304 Part I read with Section 149 IPC, with the substantive sentences directed to run concurrently.
Source: Bar and Bench
What the High Court held
The High Court held that the evidence showed more than the mere presence of the appellants in the crowd, finding that they were at the forefront of an armed mob and were exhorting others to assault Monish. “The deceased was pursued, surrounded and assaulted even after he had fallen near the police barricades. The conduct attributed to the appellants, the weapons carried by members of the mob and the continued assault upon the deceased provide the factual basis for concluding that the assembly had an unlawful common object of assaulting the deceased and causing bodily harm to him,” the court said.
Source: Live Law
The court added that once membership of an unlawful assembly and its common object or knowledge are established, the absence of proof identifying the individual who inflicted the fatal injuries does not, by itself, absolve the accused of liability under Section 149 IPC.
Source: Live Law
The convicts had argued that the prosecution case suffered from inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts, delays in recording the statements of police witnesses and the absence of a test identification parade. Rejecting the challenge, the High Court relied on the testimony of a police constable who identified the five men as being at the forefront of the armed mob, and on the accounts of other police personnel who described the pursuit and assault before the injured man was rescued.
Source: Bar and Bench
The February 2020 incident
According to the prosecution, the case arose from an incident on February 25, 2020, during the communal violence in North-East Delhi, when Monish was chased and assaulted by a mob near Brijpuri, in the vicinity of Peer Baba Mazar in Chand Bagh. He was taken to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, where he died from his injuries. The post-mortem report attributed his death to shock resulting from ante-mortem brain injuries caused by blunt-force impact.
Source: ANI via LatestLY