‘Author Jumping The Gun’: Delhi Police Refutes Times Of India Report Alleging Action Only On Political Dissenters

The Delhi Police on Saturday (8 August) have given a point by point rebuttal to a Times of India report which alleged bias in the working of the Police and stated that the police was turning the heat on ‘Political Dissenters’.

Times on India, on 6 August, had published an editorial titled “Capital aberration: Delhi police, shamed by rioters in February, instead turns the heat on political dissenters”. In the reports the author argued that the arrest of Delhi University professor Apoorvanand by Delhi police in connection with North-east Delhi riots spins a ‘deceptive narrative’.

The author wrote, “But Delhi University professor Apoorvanand’s interrogation, purportedly over support for the anti-NRC-CAA protests that long preceded the riots, spins a deceptive narrative.”

“Dissent makes democracy meaningful and representative. CAA and NRC were riddled with enough biases and procedural dangers that a significant section of society, not least its youth and Muslim citizens, felt compelled to come out in peaceful protest,” the Times of India report claimed.

The author further argued that the Delhi riots were a criminal conspiracy and drew a distinction between the said riots and ‘peaceful’ anti-CAA/NRC protests. The article further stated that February riots have reopened old wounds of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

In response to the aforementioned report, the Delhi police has released a rebuttal stating that the editorial is loaded with innuendos and insinuations.

Referring to the summoning of Professor Apoorvanand, the Delhi Police asked that how the lawful examination of a person was “absurd and self-defeating”?

Adding that the Delhi Police have neither issued a press note for summoning Apoorvanand nor have put information regarding the same in the public domain, the rebuttal questioned the source of information of the author.

The police questions, “Why has the author jumped the gun? What has he based his article on? Surely, the author does not expect the investigating officer to seek guidance from the author as to whom to examine during the course of this investigation.”

The police rebuttal has stated that these allegations by the author are nothing but a thinly-veiled, but doomed, effort at influencing the investigation itself.

Responding to allegation of Delhi Police shaming the rioters, the Delhi Police categorically stated that the whole society was shamed and taken aback by the violence, and the police did what they were supposed to do to restore order and carry out meticulous investigation to bring the culprits to book.

The police added, “The author needs to understand that criminal jurisprudence treats the act of conspiring to commit a crime as “a distinct evil” from the crime itself.” The Delhi police said, with a skewed understanding, the author has attempted to create a false narrative that the actual rioters will be spared.

Replying to the allegations that Delhi Police’s investigation into riots will curb dissent and imperil democracy, they said, “Democracy is neither protected by uttering homilies nor by penning hastily-put-together articles short on facts and expertise but replet with rhetorics and platitudes.”

Concluding the rebuttal, the Delhi police stated that this piece be carried in the op-ed page of the Delhi edition of Times of India with equal prominence as the original editorial.