Delhi's Karkardooma Court framed murder charges on Thursday, against former Aam Aadmi Party councillor Tahir Hussain and 10 others in connection with the murder of Intelligence Bureau official Ankit Sharma during the 2020 Delhi riots.

Additional Sessions Judge Pulastya Pramachala framed charges against Hussain and others under sections 147, 148, 153A, 302, 365, 120B, 149, 188 and 153A of Indian Penal Code, 1860.

Others who have been charged are Haseen, Nazim, Kasim, Sameer Khan, Anas, Firoz, Javed, Gulfam, Shoaib Alam and Muntajim.

Additionally, Tahir has been charged under sections 505, 109 and 114 of IPC.

“These acts of the mob make it clear that their objective was to harm Hindus in their body and property to the maximum possible extent. It is also clearly shown that this mob consciously wanted to even kill Hindus. It cannot be said that being members of this mob, accused persons were oblivious to such objective of this mob. Apparently, this was an unlawful assembly, acting in pursuance of the aforesaid object,” the court said.

The judge further said that petrol bombs were also arranged by accumulating the required materials in Tahir Hussain’s house, bottles of Mountain Dew were being filled with petrol and were being taken inside his house in his presence.

“Tahir was continuously acting in a manner of supervising and motivating this mob. All these things were done to target Hindus. Every member of the mob assembled there participated in achieving the objective of targeting Hindus. Such conducts of the members of this mob show that they were acting out of a meeting of their mind and with a clear-cut objective in mind, to kill and harm Hindus. Thus, a criminal conspiracy to indulge in riot and to kill Hindus and harm properties of Hindus is well reflected from the evidence on the record,” the court said.

“Tahir Hussain also played the role of instigator to kill Hindus and exhorting this mob so as to not to spare Hindus. He instigated the mob when Ankit came forward towards this mob. The conspiracy need not be specifically to kill Ankit. When the accused persons were acting in pursuance to conspiracy and common object to kill Hindus, it covered killing of Ankit as well for the reasons that Ankit was killed because he was Hindu,” the court added.

On February 27, 2020, Ankit Sharma's body was recovered from a drain in northeast Delhi's Chand Bagh area. The postmortem showed that Ankit Sharma died of a haemorrhage suffered due to severe injuries to his lungs and brain.

Image courtesy: ANI