New Delhi: Delhi High Court today ordered Delhi Police to transfer to the CBI the probe into the disappearance of Jawaharlal Nehru University student Najeeb Ahmed. Ahmed was missing since the night of October 14, 2016, a day after an altercation with some Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad students. The Bharatiya Janata Party students’ wing has denied any involvement in the disappearance.
A division bench of Justices GS Sistani and Rekha Pillai passed the order on a plea by the student’s mother after the police said it has no problem with such a direction. July 17 was set for further hearing. Ahmed’s mother, Fatima Nafees, had filed a petition before the HC seeking the whereabouts of her son who went missing from the JNU campus and was yet to be traced.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Ram Gopal Naik, who heads the Special Investigation Team, submitted before the court how he went about probing the case and what aspects and angles including that of Ahmed’s medical condition were considered by him. The High Court earlier had rapped the police over the manner of its probe into the disappearance of Ahmed by saying it appeared to be looking for an “escape route” and was “beating around the bush”.
The bench had observed that if the messages of the period when Ahmed went missing have been deleted, ''then that in itself is incriminating.'' The court further said, ''If today it is Najeeb, tomorrow it could be anybody, just because he belongs to some other community or a political body.''
The HC had held that the conduct of the police showed it was looking for a way out as it had filed reports in sealed covers and “there was nothing confidential, damaging or crucial” in them. It was a reference to the forensic analysis reports of the missing student’s laptop and call records that the police had filed in a sealed cover but had initially not even shared with its own lawyer.
The HC said that this report was perhaps planted by the police to sensationalise the matter, to distract from their lack of progress, adding that the sealed reports contained nothing to suggest that Ahmed had conducted internet searches on Islamic State. (UNI)