New Delhi: A Delhi court has acquitted five men accused of murder during the February 2020 riots.

Additional sessions judge Pulastya Pramachala in an order passed on April 3, found “no evidence” to connect the accused persons with the incident. Other charges are not maintainable, he added.

The court acquitted Kuldeep, Deepak Yadav, Deepak Thakur, Mohammed Furkan and Mohammed Irshad of all the charges. One Salman was allegedly murdered by a mob, however, in the court’s opinion the investigating officer (IO) hadn’t found the real culprit.

The five men were charged with the offence for allegedly being part of the mob that killed Salman. “It is important for the prosecution to show that the alleged act was done by the members of that mob in pursuance to the common object of that mob and accused was member of such mob at the relevant time,” the court said.

Going by the prosecution’s theory, the court noted the presence of two mobs comprising members of two different faiths and confronting each other at Shiv Vihar Tiraha on February 24, 2020. Their common object was to inflict damage upon the rival mob and not on their own members, it noted.

“Therefore, the stand taken by IO in the chargesheet to prosecute members of both rival mobs for culpable homicide of Salman cannot be accepted to be in consonance with the law,” it held.

The case’s conclusion by the police showed that the actual rioters involved in the alleged murder could not be traced, the court said, and if Delhi Police was unable to find the real culprit it ought to have filed an untrace report.

“Suffice to say that prosecution of all the accused persons in this case, for culpable homicide of Salman, was not based on correct appreciation of law,” it said. There was no evidence against the accused persons to connect them in any manner, either in individual capacity or as members of the group of rioters with the incident of gunfire at Salman, it added.