Recently, a committee headed by retired Justice Madan Lokur released a “citizen’s report” on the 2020 anti-Hindu Delhi riots. In the name of analyzing, the report furthers the leftist-Islamist narrative of the Hindu community being the aggressor in an attempt to absolve the actual Islamist aggressors.

The report is titled “Uncertain Justice: A Citizen’s Committee Report on the North East Delhi Violence 2020”. It simply distorts the truth and cherry-picks facts to suit the cabal’s agenda and the dangerous narrative being peddled. Besides Lokur, former Chief Justice of the Madras and Delhi High Courts A P Shah; former judge of the Delhi High Court R S Sodhi; former judge of the Patna High Court Anjana Prakash; and former Home Secretary G K Pillai are members of the committee.

An OpIndia report in this regard notes:

If one reads the coverage in the corporate media, one is pressed to find any criticism of the report, even a cursory one. There seems to have been no reading of the report itself to figure out if the report is authentic. The media essentially bases their reporting on the “appeal to authority” argument fallacy, where they assume that since former Supreme Court judges released this report, it must be authentic. There has been no perusal of facts and misinformation due to omission or commission that are included in the 171-page report.

When one starts reading through the report, the executive summary of the report itself has several fallacies. The first paragraph of the executive summary itself says, “Polarisation between communities, particularly anti-Muslim hate, was deliberately fuelled in the months preceding the violence”. The report in this para says that the Muslim community was grappling with fears of losing their citizenship due to the compounding effect of CAA and nationwide NRC. In the entire report, the Justices refuse to mention who was fuelling the misinformation regarding CAA and NRC that fuelled that supposed fear of the Muslim community.

The 17000-page chargesheet in the Delhi riots details the well-planned conspiracy to foment riots and unrest on December 5 when the Citizenship Amendment Bill was tabled in Parliament. The roles of Islamists Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, former AAP leader Tahir Hussain, and others in the Delhi riots have already come to the fore. The pamphlets written by Sharjeel Imam were communal in nature and essentially aimed to incite hate in the Muslim community by invoking the Supreme Court decision in the Ram Janmabhoomi case. 

Justice Lokur’s report doesn’t take the facts mentioned in the chargesheet into consideration. The report blames ‘anti-Muslim hate’ for the riots when the evidence clearly indicates that anti-CAA protestors spread misinformation regarding CAA and NRC to trigger the riots. The Lokur committee report says Muslims were scared of the legal implications in an attempt to exonerate the Muslim community.

The report also mentions the speeches of Anurag Thakur and Kapil Mishra insinuating that it was their speeches that caused the riots. Lokur’s report conveniently overlooks Muslim-centric speeches and posts that contributed to the violence. The only focus of the report with regard to the chargesheet is how UAPA isn’t applicable to Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid and others’ speeches so that their offences are diluted.

“Tahir Hussain, who is one of the main conspirators of the Delhi violence, is mentioned 7 times in the 171-page report. 4 times to cherry-pick facts to trash the investigation of the Delhi police and 3 times to tangentially say the application of UAPA is not valid. None of his crimes and his confessions is added to the report because they clearly inconvenience the conclusion that the report wishes to reach”, notes OpIndia.

“From the morning of February 23, BJP leaders, prominently Kapil Mishra, as well as Hindu nationalist figures such as Ragini Tiwari, gave calls for mobilization and direct action against this group. At about 4 p.m. that day, Kapil Mishra delivered a speech at Maujpur Chowk close to the new anti-CAA protest site. He gave an ultimatum to the Delhi Police to ‘clear the roads in Jaffrabad and Chand Bagh’ within 3 days, or he and his supporters would do so themselves”, says Lokur’s reports blaming Hindu leaders for the riots.

The report adds, “he was referring to the anti-CAA protests taking place in these localities. Shortly after his speech, stone pelting broke out between pro-CAA and anti-CAA groups in Maujpur and Jaffrabad. It becomes clear that the hateful content purveyed on 22-23 February was designed to incite, exhort and provoke actions of violence and these calls, thereby, appear to have acted as an immediate trigger to the break-out”.

The cunningly worded report doesn’t who started the riots and also the violence that preceded the anti-Hindu Delhi riots. The chargesheet clearly mentions that Islamists started the violence and it was anti-CAA Muslims who started pelting stones.

The report not only tries to paint the Muslim community as blanket victims but also leaves out crucial evidence that goes against their narrative and craftily downplays the brutal murders of Hindus.

Lokur committee terms Ankit’s brutal murder as ‘death’ and says the circumstances of his death are unclear when the chargesheet categorically provides evidence to the contrary. It must be highlighted that IB staffer Ankit Sharma was stabbed multiple times by Islamists and his body was discarded in a nearby drain by the mob. A witness standing at a distance on a terrace captured the video on his mobile in which a mob is seen dumping the deceased body into the drain. The dead body was recovered from the drain the next morning.

The glaring omissions in the report raise questions about its authenticity as well as veracity. The report also goes on to specifically indict the Ministry of Home Affairs with no evidence whatsoever. It attempts to insinuate that the Union Home Ministry deliberately allowed the riots.

Regarding the deliberate posturing by the Lokur committee and attempt to twist facts to suit their narrative, OpIndia notes:

1. 1. The aim is to prove that Hindus were responsible for the riots (that were actually anti-Hindu in nature).
   2. That nationalist media and Hindu nationalists fired the violence and spread anti-Muslim hate for months preceding the violence.
   3. Dilution of UAPA – this is evidenced by the fact that they mostly focus only on chargesheet 59 (that too selectively) and have dedicated an entire section to talk about how UAPA should not be applicable to the cases of Tahir Hussain, Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid and the others.
   4. Call for a clamp down on social media and media at large for “hate speech”. This, of course, is being done with the specific aim of shutting down dialogue on social media, which essentially dampens their larger agenda, as it did during the Delhi Riots, to implicate Hindus and ensure that their narrative runs large.

The report by Justice Lokur and others is an essential practice in furthering a skewed narrative on the Delhi violence, essentially blaming the victims – the Hindus – and using the dead bodies to fulfil their agenda of censorship and exoneration of anti-National elements like Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid and others, while calling also for the dilution of UAPA to give such elements a free run, and implicating the government with no evidence whatsoever.

Why should a report devoid of facts be taken seriously only because former SC judges have endorsed it? On this occasion, it must also be pointed out that Lokur had participated in Pakistan Chief Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani’s swearing-in ceremony.

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