Najeeb Ahmad case: Hearing scheduled for October 27

Najeeb has now been missing for nearly over a year.

The Delhi High Court has scheduled the hearing in the missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmad case for October 27, news agency ANI reported. The development comes days after the court pulled up the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for its “complete lack of interest” in probing the disappearance of the JNU student. Najeeb has now been missing for nearly over a year.

A High Court Bench in the previous hearing had said, “There is nothing on the status report…We are saying there is complete lack of interest. There is no result either way. No result even on paper.” The CBI had earlier submitted its status report in a sealed cover to a bench of Justice G S Sistani and Justice Chander Shekhar. The bench underlined the contradictions in the call detail records (CDRs) and messages in the status report, vis-a-vis what was orally submitted.

The bench then directed the agency to file an application in the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM), for early hearing of the plea seeking consent of the nine suspected students to conduct a polygraph test. This has been listed for January 24. Earlier, the court had also directed the central agency to take all necessary steps to trace Najeeb, while hearing a plea filed by his mother Fatima Nafees.

Najeeb, a first year MSc. student in the University had engaged in an alleged scuffle with members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on the night of October 14, he went missing a day later. Despite several search operations within and outside the campus premise the police have failed to locate any whereabouts of the student since then.