Five years on, has India forgotten the victims of the Delhi riots?

On February 23, 2020, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Mishra delivered an ultimatum against the crowds protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act: if the police did not remove them, he and his supporters would take the law into their own hands and evict them. Without hours of this violent threat, riots began in the city.

Passed in 2019 by the Modi government, the CAA allowed migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to become Indian citizens even if they had entered India illegally. The only criteria: they should not be Muslim. It was the first time religion had been made part of Indian citizenship law. The act had sparked protests across India.

For nearly a week after Mishra’s speech, North East Delhi saw intense violence. Mob action was combined with state atrocity, as numerous instances of policemen attacking Muslims emerged. By February 29, 53 people were dead – two-thirds of them Muslim.

Rather than blame the rioters or leaders like Kapil Mishra, who had been caught red-handed on camera inciting violence, the Delhi Police filed a sprawling case of conspiracy against leaders of the movement that opposed the CAA. My colleague Vineet Bhalla read through more than 30,000 pages of the chargesheets and found that there was little evidence…

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