On September 16, Police filed a voluminous charge sheet against the accused under various sections of UAPA, Indian Penal Code, Arms Act and Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act. The copy of the charge sheet was supplied to their counsels on Monday.

 

In the charge sheet, the police claimed that five persons, including evicted municipal councillor Tahir Hussain, former councillor Ishrat Jahan, student Meeran Haider, activist Khalid Saifi and Shifa-ur-Rehman, received Rs 1.61 crore as cash or bank transaction, out of which Rs 1.48 crore was used to manage the protest sites and execute the conspiracy of riots.

 

The charge sheet was filed in little less than 200 days of filing an FIR to investigate the conspiracy angle behind the riots that rocked northeast Delhi in February this year. Clashes between the citizenship law supporters and protesters had spiralled out of control, leaving at least 53 people dead and around 200 injured.

 

Besides mentioning the financial transaction, the police also expanded on how the riots were "engineered". They said that a secret conspiratorial meeting was held on February 16-17 February midnight and it was then that the "key conspirators made up their mind that the final show down of the pan Delhi protests will be executed in northeast, Shahdara, south districts with the areas of Chand Bagh and Jafrabad as the initial hotspots."

 

The chargesheet revealed that there was a clear understanding between the key conspirators who attended this meeting that the protest sites, currently located in side lanes in Muslim dominated areas, would need to be shifted and converted into chakka jaam on carefully chosen sites located on arterial or busy roads in proximity to mixed population areas to paralyze the normal movement of traffic and flow of life and engineer riots.

 

"The traffic would be followed by confrontation and attack on Policemen and Public Persons, damage, and destruction of public property by use of arson and other means in these so engineered riots," the chargesheet revealed.

 

It added: "It is not a mere coincidence that while the weapon of offence was financed by Tahir Hussain, the finance for cartridges used in the murder of Rahul Solanki came from Suleman Siddique, one of thepersons who had attended this secret conspiratorial meeting."

 

The chargesheet names Tahir Hussain, Safoora Zargar, Gulfisha Khatoon, Devangana Kalita,Shafa-ur-Rehman, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Natasha Narwal, Abdul Khalid Saifi, Ishrat Jahan, Meeran Haidar, Shadab Ahamd, Talsim Ahmad, Saleem Malik, Mohammed Salim Khan and Athar Khan.

 

Tahir Hussain has been named as a main accused in the chargesheet.

 

The chargesheet, however, does not name Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam,Mohammed Pervez Ahmad, Mohammed Ilyas, Danish and Faizal Khan. Their names will be added in the supplementary chargesheet.