New Delhi, Aug 21: After a high voltage drama for over six hours, the Delhi Police on Friday registered a FIR in connection with the pellet gun injury to a student and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi dubbing it as the “first step towards justice”.
Rahul Gandhi showed a copy of the FIR at the Parliament Street Police station for over six hours claimed that the “final okay” for registering the case had to come from home Secretary and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
The former Congress president said, “This is the first step towards justice. The case has been registered. It has been a month since he was hit by that bullet. Pellets are still lodged in his body; three are in his eye, and he cannot see out of it. Three or four are near his heart. A grave injustice has been done to this young man. We arrived here at 11:00 or 11:30 this morning. We have been here all this time – it is now nearly a quarter to seven – and only now has the FIR been filed.”
Taking a swipe at the government, he said, “Just imagine: in this country, so many women are raped, so many children are killed, so many people are shot, and so many carry pellets in their bodies. This police station is right in the heart of Delhi, yet justice is not being served here.”
“Imagine what must happen at a police station in a village or a small town. We haven’t done anything wrong here; we simply sought justice for an Indian citizen – for his mother and father – and it took eight hours. The final approval – the ultimate ‘okay’ – had to come from the Home Secretary and Amit Shah himself. Only then was the FIR finally issued. So, you can understand who was holding up the FIR. These police officers wanted to register it; the others wanted to do it too, but the brakes on justice were being applied from the top,” he alleged.
According to sources, Delhi Police has registered the FIR under Sections 118 and 125 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
The FIR was registered after Rahul Gandhi earlier in the day accompanied Lochab to the DCP office and demanded action on his complaint alleging excessive use of force during the students’ “Sansad Chalo” march on July 20.
He later staged a sit-in protest outside the office of the DCP central at the Parliament Street police station, alleging that police had refused to register the complaint.
Several senior Congress leaders including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Salman Khurshid, Jairam Ramesh, Kumari Selja, Gurdeep Singh Sappal, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Imran Pratapgarhi, Sashikant Senthil, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Mukul Wasnik and others also joined him in the dharna.
Following the sit in protest at police station, Delhi Police beefed up the security as Rapid Action Force personnel were also deployed at the spot as the confrontation continued.
Rahul Gandhi also accused the authorities of undermining constitutional principles, saying that refusing to register an FIR amounted to the “Constitution being trampled.”