More than 1 crore used to manage protests

New Delhi: A recent chargesheet filed by Special Cell of the Delhi Police in connection with the alleged conspiracy in the Delhi riots case revealed that five accused, slapped with the stringent UAPA, received Rs 1.61 crore to execute the conspiracy.

On September 16, the 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 chargesheet was supplied to their counsels on Monday.

In the chargesheet, 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 chargesheet 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." Continued on Page 5