Delhi court sets aside order to investigate Minister Kapil Mishra’s role in 2020 northeast Delhi riots

In a major relief for Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra, a sessions court on Monday (November 10, 2025) set aside a trial court’s order directing the Delhi Police to investigate his alleged role in the northeast Delhi riots of 2020.

The riots claimed 53 lives and left hundreds displaced. The Delhi Police’s special cell has filed more than 750 first information reports (FIRs) over allegations of riots, arson, murder, loot, etc. during the riots. A case of alleged large conspiracy was also filed against 18 people, who have been booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

Special Judge (Prevention of Corruption Act) Dig Vinay Singh of the Rouse Avenue Courts quashed Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Vaibhav Chaurasiya’s April 1 order.

While ordering an FIR registration and probe against Mr. Mishra, judge Chaurasiya had said that it was necessary to probe the BJP leader’s role in the riots. It also came down heavily on the Delhi Police over the manner in which they interrogated Mr. Mishra and questioned the “theories propounded by the prosecution” about the “immediate cause” behind the northeast Delhi riots, which the police said was a pre-planned conspiracy by anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protesters.

“Once these flaws are outlined, therefore the theory goes off and so does the lens with which prosecution seeks to interpret the facts,” the court had said.

The Magistrate court’s order came on a plea filed by Yamuna Vihar resident Mohammad Ilyas, who, in his complaint, had claimed that on February 23, 2020, he saw Mr. Mishra and some others along with him blocking the road in Kardampuri and breaking the carts of street vendors. He also claimed that then Deputy Commissioner of Police (Northeast) and other Delhi Police officers were standing beside Mr. Mishra, who also threatened action against the anti-CAA protesters if they did not vacate the area. The complainant also claimed that he witnessed the Station House Officer and others named in the plea vandalising mosques across different parts of northeast Delhi.

Responding to Mr. Ilyas’s complaint, the Delhi Police had told the court that Mr. Mishra’s role had already been investigated in connection with the alleged larger conspiracy in the matter, in which former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Umar Khalid and other student activists have been booked under the UAPA.

Mr. Mishra and the Delhi Police challenged the order before the sessions court, which, on April 9, stayed the order for further probe.

Setting aside the FIR ordered against the BJP leader, the session court said that the Magistrate Court could not have ordered further investigation in the matter because the Delhi Police had already registered an FIR regarding an alleged larger conspiracy behind the riots and the same is under trial at Karkardooma Court.

“…The impugned order is jurisdictionally flawed and legally unsustainable, and it must be set aside,” Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh said.

He added that even if Mr. Mishra’s role, concerning the alleged conspiracy, needs to be investigated, and the incident, as alleged by the complainant, was not probed, then a separate FIR could have been directed, and this would have been legally permissible.

“However, this required a specific finding that there was no connection between the incident alleged by the complainant and the  investigation in FIR No. 59/2020, and that the complaint disclosed a cognizable offence that requires collection of evidence by the police,” it said.

“Judicial orders, especially those affecting rights and potentially affecting someone’s liberty, must be unambiguous. Any such order that could impact someone’s rights and liberty must be explicit and free from conflicting interpretations,” the sessions court said.

“His (magistrate’s) assertion that the prosecution’s theory-building had numerous flaws and involved guesswork, assumptions and interpretation prematurely adjudicates the merits of an ongoing trial,” it said.