The Delhi High Court has dismissed a group of petitions seeking new criminal cases and independent investigations over alleged hate speech, police conduct and the violence surrounding the 2020 North-East Delhi riots.
Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Manoj Jain rejected 15 petitions that had remained pending for years. Some asked the court to direct police to register cases against political leaders for speeches said to have contributed to the violence. Others sought a court-monitored special investigation into alleged police excesses during the 2019 Jamia Millia Islamia protests and the riots that followed.
The court said the record showed an element of “political selectivity” in the people and speeches chosen for action. It stopped short of making a finding about the petitioners’ motives, but concluded that the circumstances did not justify the exceptional remedy of ordering fresh criminal cases or a separate investigation.
The petitions named figures from several parties, including Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma and Sonia Gandhi. Their dismissal is not a judicial endorsement of every statement placed before the court. It means the applicants did not establish the legal basis required for the High Court to compel registration of first-information reports or replace the existing investigative process.
The decision also closes, at High Court level, a set of proceedings that had become a parallel forum for disputes over responsibility for the riots and the state’s response to them. Any appeal would have to identify an error in the court’s treatment of the evidence, the threshold for mandatory criminal investigation or the scope of judicial review over police decisions.
The full reasoning will matter beyond the named politicians. Courts are often asked to intervene when allegations of incendiary speech overlap with partisan conflict. The judgment draws attention to even-handed selection and the need for a legal, rather than political, basis before criminal process is compelled.
Delhi High Court pronouncements
