The decision to relax Section 144 of the CrPC was taken a day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah was informed about the law and order situation in a review meeting with Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik and newly appointed Special Commissioner S.N. Srivastava.

 

Sha was told that no major incident was reported in the last 36 hours in any affected police station of the northeast districts. 

 

Police sources said that the restrictions have been relaxed from 8 a.m. in the morning.

 

Areas under 12 of the 203 police stations in Delhi (about 4.2 per cent of the geographical area) got affected in the violence that began on February 23 evening and continued for a couple of days.

 

Since the violence, the Delhi Police has registered 48 First Information Reports (FIRs), pertaining to clashes, loss of lives and property and further FIRs are expected to be registered in due course.

 

Police have arrested 514 suspects for questioning so far and that more arrests would come in the course of investigation.

 

Delhi Police has separately set up two SITs for investigating serious offences and nearly 7,000 Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) or paramilitary forces have been deployed in the riot hit areas since February 24.

 

Besides, Delhi Police has also deployed three Special CPs, six Joint CPs, one Additional CP, 22 DCPs, 20 ACPs, 60 Inspectors, 1,200 other ranks and 200 women police under the overall supervision of Commissioner of Police to effectively guide and supervise police response so as to contain and normalise the situation.

 

So far, nearly 330 peace committee meetings have been organised in various districts of Delhi in the last two days to contain peace among people after the violence that left a Delhi Police Head Constable and an Intelligence Bureau staffer dead and nearly 70 police personnel and senior officers injured. An assortment of civilians ranging from an autorickshaw driver to small businessmen were also killed in the riot.

 

The most affected localities were Bhjanpura, Chand Bagh, Maujpur, Kardampuri, Jafrabad, Ashok Nagar, Shiv Vihar. A total of 73 companies of CAPF or paramilitary forces were deployed in the city on February 24 in addition to 40 companies of Delhi Police.