The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) investigation report into the 2019 Jamia Millia Islamia violence case, in which police officers allegedly barged onto the Jamia campus in Delhi and beat up students who were protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens, has been ordered to be submitted by the Delhi Police by the Delhi High Court (NRC). Senior Attorney Indira Jaising testified before the court that Delhi Police officers broke into the campus without the vice chancellor’s consent and violently beat up students, inflicting close to death injuries. Numerous petitions have been pending before the High Court for almost three years, and even though the arguments in the cases were virtually through, they were later removed off the list of those that had only been partially heard. The Supreme Court asked the High Court to make a decision on the appeals quickly.
The Delhi High Court heard a case regarding excessive police force use. Indira Jaising, the petitioner, brought up the death of African American man George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police as he was being arrested. The bench retorted that it would look into the case if the petitioner requested that the court do so. The court’s petitioners, according to attorney Rajat Nair, are unrelated outsiders and interlopers who have no link to the occurrence. Jaising said, however, that since she is requesting a court-monitored inquiry, even if an inquiry was held, it would not answer her demands.
The Delhi Police’s investigation report was then ordered to be recorded by the court, and the petitioners in another case were instructed to record the evidence proving that they had filed a complaint with the appropriate authorities before approaching the court. On May 8, the matter will be heard once more. On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to overturn an Allahabad High Court ruling from November 2017 ordering the evacuation of a mosque from its grounds. Waqf Masjid High Court was the petitioner, and a bench of Justices MR Shah and CT Ravikumar allowed the parties three months to comply with the judgement while allowing the petitioner to request alternative land from the State government. The controversy began with a petition filed by Abhishek Shukla, who claimed that the mosque, a waqf property, was built on land that was originally the High Court’s property.
The Waqf property was causing the fire brigade to move slowly, according to the High Court, which had also noticed the “severe compression of space” in the area. The High Court could not organise separate chambers for twelve judges, who are currently sharing six chambers, due to the growth in the number of judges and the lack of space. The State government had been given notice by the Supreme Court to offer alternative land for the mosque in April 2018. Senior Attorney Kapil Sibal contended that the High Court’s PIL was filed shortly after the Yogi Adityanath administration took office in the State and requested alternative land as a remedy. Senior attorney Indira Jaising argued on behalf of the UP Sunni Waqf Board that the board owned the mosque intended for public use and that the property belonged to the government. The respondent’s attorney stated that the High Court had taken into account all of these factors and that the PIL did not cite the possibility of a change in government as a factor. There is another mosque close to the High Court, according to Assistant Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, and the appellants were correct to assert that they had no rights to the contested property. For the petitioners, attorney MR Shamshad also made his appearance.
