A Karkardooma court has convicted former councillor Tahir Hussain for rioting and abetment in a 2020 North-East Delhi riots case, finding that his house rooftop was used as a strategic elevated position from which rioters pelted stones at passers-by and nearby properties.
Additional Sessions Judge Praveen Singh delivered the findings in a 64-page judgment. The court also acquitted nine other co-accused of all charges, citing a lack of sufficient evidence against them.
According to the prosecution’s arguments, eyewitness and other witness statements established that a violent mob had carried out large-scale violence and vandalism on the main Karawal Nagar Road on the day of the incident. Special Public Prosecutor Madhukar Pandey told the court that stones were repeatedly thrown from the direction of Hussain’s house.
The prosecution argued that allowing rioters to use the rooftop of the multi-storey building gave them indirect protection and strengthened their ability to attack people and shops on the road. The court found that a large crowd of rioters was present on the rooftop during the violence and that people and properties along the road were targeted from there.
Hussain had argued that the crowd had forcibly entered his home and that he had been unable to stop them. The court noted that he could not provide substantial evidence to support this defence. It convicted him under Section 147 of the Indian Penal Code, relating to rioting, read with Section 109, which concerns abetment.
The court did not, however, accept that the evidence established all the more serious allegations against Hussain. The report said no eyewitness directly proved that he had personally participated in setting shops on fire, looting or distributing weapons among the mob. Those findings distinguish the court’s conclusion about the use of the rooftop from allegations of direct participation in each act of violence.
The judgment also raised questions about aspects of the police investigation and the reliability of police witnesses. The court observed that some police witnesses introduced new details during their testimony that were not present in their earlier statements recorded under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The absence of a duty roster produced by the police also created doubt about whether some of those witnesses were present at the location when the violence took place. These issues contributed to the acquittal of the nine other accused, according to the report.
The judgment places the use of private buildings and elevated spaces at the centre of the court’s account of how violence unfolded along a major urban road. It also records the evidentiary limits that prevented the court from treating every allegation against every accused as proved. The next legally relevant development will be the sentencing process and any further proceedings arising from the judgment.
