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Written by Kamaldeep Singh Brar
| Amritsar |
February 4, 2021 12:24:53 pm
Following the chaos and violence on January 26, the Delhi Police had indicated that more than 200 persons had been rounded up. (Express file photo) In a letter to the Delhi Police Commissioner, Punjab Human Rights Organisation chief Justice Ajit Singh Bains (retd) has urged the police to preserve CCTV footage of all police stations in Delhi from January 26 to 30.
The letter claims that many protesters were arrested when they went to police stations to inquire about their friends and relatives who were missing after the kisan parade.
The letter said, “Due to pressure and to cover up their incompetency and failure to enforce the law, Delhi Police has taken hundreds of persons/farmers into custody from various parts of Delhi and taken them to police stations. Even during press conference on January 27, you admitted that Delhi Police arrested 19 persons and detained 50 others which proves that it was in your knowledge that some persons are in illegal custody of Delhi Police and it was further briefed through the press that 25 criminal cases were registered regarding the incidents/violence.”
“It was further reported that some farmer agitators and their associates were taken into custody by the Delhi Police along with their vehicles when they were roaming on the roads of Delhi in the evening of 26th January and later on shown as arrested in criminal cases….The scientific evidence in this regard is CCTV footages of the Cameras installed at various police stations as mentioned above and even it will be the best evidence for Delhi Police during the trials of these cases. It is therefore requested that concerned officials and SHOs/Investigation Officers of all the criminal cases/FIRs registered by the Delhi Police regarding the Republic Day incidents / violence be directed to preserve the CCTV footages of dated January 26 to 30.”
Justice Bains, a retired HC judge, was arrested in 1992 and booked under TADA for a speech made by him at a Sikh religious event. Back then, while the state government accused him of making seditious pronouncements, his organisation had said that his treatment was precisely the kind of actions that he had been fighting to expose.