Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Muzaffarnagar: Even a year after voilent clashes in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh that claimed 65 lives and left 50,000 homeless, the state government has been unable to bring the offenders to book. In fact, the police have even tried to convince victims to withdraw cases.
A special cell of officers from outside Muzaffarnagar was set up for an unbiased probe into 510 cases, but investigations have barely made progress. Even the murder of IBN Network reporter Rajesh Verma has seen no arrest.
Not even half the 1,560 accused have been arrested in 510 cases so far. This even left people thinking whether there was any political will on part of the state administration to take these cases to their logical conclusion.
These cases involving murder, rape, arson and rioting do not even have a special prosecutor looking at them. Nasir Ali was made Special Prosecutor for three months but was dumped soon after.
Ali said, “I made sure that the probe was effective. As a result I was removed. It’s possible there were groups with vested interests that didn’t want a fair investigation and hence got me removed.”
He claimed that leaks from within the local police allowed the accused to evade arrest.
Ali said, “The Investigation Officer confessed that information gets leaked and nabbing suspects becomes a task.”
Even the District Magistrate did not deny this charge. He said, “We don’t completely rule out the possibility of such leak because when you mobilise a team and travel 40 kms to make an arrest, a lot of people get to know.”
In cases of sexual assault of the 25 accused only 3 have been arrested. There were allegations that the probe team was trying to settle cases and not investigate them. A year later, the Special Investigation Cell seemed to have defeated its own purpose.
