What happened (court verdict and sentencing)

A Delhi court sentenced former Aam Aadmi Party councillor Tahir Hussain and four other accused to life imprisonment for the 2020 north-east Delhi riots murder of Intelligence Bureau officer Ankit Sharma. The court described Sharma’s killing as extremely brutal and stated that Sharma was targeted solely on the basis of religion during communal violence that followed protests linked to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens-related controversy.

The court rejected the death penalty even while it found the case met the threshold for the “rarest of rare” category. The judge’s stated reason was that the prosecution failed to prove beyond reformation (meaning proof that the accused cannot improve) that the death penalty was the only option.

On criminal liability, the court held that guilt was established with the aid of Section 149 IPC (section that makes members of an unlawful assembly liable for certain offences committed in prosecution of the common object). At the same time, the court recorded that the prosecution did not attribute any specific fatal act to any individual accused, and treated this as a significant mitigating factor in sentencing.

The court also dismissed sentencing-time allegations by the prosecution that Tahir Hussain instigated or led the mob, because such allegations were not proved during the trial.

The court considered poor educational backgrounds of four of the five convicts as mitigation in the riot context, while still awarding punishment under the law.

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