New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday, 27 October 2026, upheld the conviction and seven-year jail term awarded to five men for culpable homicide not amounting to murder in connection with the killing of a 22-year-old man during the 2020 North-East Delhi riots, Live Law reported.
Source: Live Law
Justice Madhu Jain dismissed the appeals filed by Aman Kashyap, Devinder Kumar, Pradeep Rai, Ashish and Arun Kumar, who had challenged their conviction under Sections 148 and 304 Part I read with Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The 2020 Chand Bagh incident
The case arose from an incident on 25 February 2020, during the communal violence in North-East Delhi. According to the prosecution, Monish was chased and assaulted by a mob in the vicinity of Peer Baba Mazar, Chand Bagh. He was taken to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. The post-mortem report attributed his death to shock resulting from ante-mortem brain injuries caused by blunt-force impact.
The trial court, by its judgment dated 30 November 2024, convicted the five appellants. On 13 January 2025, they were sentenced to one year of simple imprisonment for rioting while armed with a deadly weapon and seven years of rigorous imprisonment, along with a fine of Rs 30,000, for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, the sentences to run concurrently, LawChakra reported in its account of the judgment.
Source: LawChakra
Why the court dismissed the appeals
The High Court held that the evidence established more than the mere presence of the appellants in a mob, and that they were at the forefront of an armed mob, exhorting others to assault the deceased. “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, as quoted by Live Law.
The court added that once membership of an unlawful assembly and its common object 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.
The appellants had pointed to inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts, delay in recording police witnesses' statements, the absence of a test identification parade and alleged deficiencies in the investigation. Rejecting these contentions, the court noted that a beat constable posted in the locality had identified all five appellants and knew them from before the incident through his official duties, that other police witnesses substantially corroborated the account, and that the testimony of police officials cannot be discarded merely because of their official status. All five appeals were accordingly dismissed.