20 more acquitted in 2013 Muzaffarnagar riot case

PTI, Oct 20, 2021, 8:41 PM IST

Muzaffarnagar: A court here has acquitted twenty more accused in a 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riot case due to lack of evidence against them.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Kamla Pati has acquitted them Tuesday saying the prosecution has failed to prove charges against them.

The acquitted accused were identified as Kapil, Dushyant, Ajay, Ravinder, Vikas, Rahul, Sachin, Amit, Rajiv, Jaipal, Anuj, Sudhir, Kuldeep, Mohit, Baru and five others, all of Lank village in the district.

In an FIR lodged at Phugana police station in the district on September 8, 2013, all twenty men were accused of barging into the house of their neighbour Abdul Hasan and shooting him dead after slitting his throat.

The case had been registered on the complaint of the victim’s brother.

The acquitted people had also been accused of looting gold and jewellery worth over Rs 6 lakh from their house.

Following the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, which had left around 60 people dead and triggered a mass exodus from the district, the police had lodged a total of 510 cases and arrested 1,480 people allegedly involved in riots.

The Special Investigation Team of Uttar Pradesh has filed so far charge sheets in 175 cases after investigating them.

The court has decided 99 cases till now, acquitting a total of 1,198 accused due to lack of evidence in 98 of them.

The sole case which has ended in conviction pertained to the killing of two men, Gaurav and Sachin, on August 27, 2013. Seven people — Muzammil, Mujassim, Furkan, Nadeem, Janangir, Afzal and Ikbal — were sentenced to life imprisonment in February 2019 in this case, which is believed to have triggered the riots.