The judge flayed the Delhi Police for not making the “effort” to properly investigate the case, noting that “merely filing charge-sheet without any real effort made to trace out the eye witnesses, real accused persons and technical evidence” will not do.

Calling the riots the worst since Partition in Delhi, the judge said that when “history books would look back”, it will be the “failure of the investigating agency” (Delhi Police) that “will surely torment the sentinels of democracy”.

The Delhi Police took all the insults heaped on it in silence even as its reputation, whatever little was left of it, lay in shreds. In fact, it’s a wonder there have been no calls for heads to roll, both in the Delhi Police and in the Union Home Ministry. Come to think of it, Union Home Minister Amit Shah should set the example. He should take the blame and head for the sunset.

The judge made it amply clear that he was disgusted at the functioning of the Delhi Police in the “instant case”; the “lack of supervision thereof by the superior officers” depicting that the investigating agency “merely tried to pull the wool over the court’s eyes and nothing else.”

He went on to hammer the Delhi Police for the “colossal wastage of hard-earned money of tax-payers, without there being any real intent of investigating the matter”. Earlier, it had fined the Delhi Police Rs 25,000 for “miserably failing” to investigate the 2020 northeast Delhi riots.