New Delhi: Days after western Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor saw one of the most brutal police crackdowns on groups protesting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens, an FIR was lodged against the station house officer (SHO) of Nahtaur Rajesh Kumar Solanki in a case related to the killing of 20-year-old Mohammed Suleiman.
Suleiman and another boy Anas were gunned down by the Bijnor police on December 20, soon after protests escalated after the afternoon namaz. Solanki, who has now been transferred to the District Crime Record Bureau (DCRB), local outpost in-charge Ashish Tomar, constable Mohit Kumar and three other “unidentified” policemen have been named in the FIR filed by Suleiman’s brother Shoaib, Satya Prakash Singh, the new SHO of Nahtaur confirmed to the Indian Express.
Singh said that the FIR has been filed under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon) and 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object).
Bijnor’s additional superintendent of police (rural) Vishwajeet Srivastava said that Solanki was transferred out of the Nahtaur station because “he was injured and could not work”.
Also Read: Ground Report: Families of Two Young Men Felled by Bullets in Bijnor Contest Police Claims
In the days following the police action, top officials of UP police insisted that its forces did not fire at the protesting crowd, despite video evidence pointing to the contrary. However, it changed its version after Sanjeev Tyagi, superintendent of police, Bijnor, told the Indian Express and NDTV that Suleiman had died by a gunshot fired by constable Mohit Kumar in “self-defence”.
“One cartridge was retrieved from Suleiman’s body. The ballistic report confirms that this was shot from the service pistol of Mohit Kumar. Mohit Kumar (constable) also suffered a bullet injury. The bullet taken from Mohit Kumar’s stomach was found to be shot from a country-made weapon,” Tyagi had said.
The police did not find any weapon on Suleiman, and thus, it did not clarify who shot Mohit Kumar.
Suleiman, a third-year undergraduate student, had come home from Noida where he stayed with his maternal uncle to prepare for the civil services examinations. His family later alleged that Sulieman was picked up by the police on his way back from the mosque and was shot point-blank near a madrasa.
The police’s violent clampdown on protests across Uttar Pradesh has been severely criticised by many democratic groups as they came soon after the chief minister Adityanath’s statement that ‘revenge would be taken’ on those who were protesting the CAA.