A Delhi court on Saturday handed a two-year prison sentence to former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councilor Tahir Hussain for riots in the Dayalpur area of the capital in February last year. The court had found 12 others accused in the case not guilty.
Then Additional Sessions Judge Praveen Singh finding Hussain guilty of committing ‘riot’’ under Section 147 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and read with Section 109 (abetment when the act is done in consequence of the abetment and a punishment for it is not otherwise provided), sentenced him to 14 years in jail.
But the court has set November 16 for arguments on a quantum of sentence, to decide Husain’s punishment.
All in all, 13 people were found guilty — Hussain, Mohammad Shadab, Shah Alam, Riyasat Ali, Gulfam, Rashid, Mohammad Rihan, Mohammad Abid, Arshad Qayyum, Irshad Ahmed, Deepak Singh Saini, Navneet and Mehak Singh.
The accused had allegedly been charged with rioting, stealing from inside a dwelling house and causing mischief to by setting fire or using weapons such as explosives. The court found the 12 co-accused not guilty and sentenced Hussain only under the aforesaid sections.
Hussain was also found guilty in a July 2020 verdict by a court in Delhi in another case involving Ankit Sharma’s death in the 2020 northeast Delhi riots and four other men. In this regard, the court had found Hussain guilty for offences such as murder, promotion of enmity, rioting, assault and use of criminal force.
The case in hand had been taken up based on the complaint of Ankit Sharma’s father, Ravinder Kumar at Dayalpur police station. Hussain, whose name was related to the riots that erupted during the unrest, was previously dropped from the AAP rolls.
Fewer than 55 people lost their lives, while numerous others were injured and property destroyed in the violence in the northeast Delhi in February 2020. Several cases were registered against the accused in a series of criminal cases after the riots, resulting in long protracted legal proceedings against multiple offenders.