Tahir Hussain Moves Delhi High Court Against Life Term in IB Officer Murder Case

Former Aam Aadmi Party councillor Tahir Hussain has approached the Delhi High Court to challenge his conviction and life sentence in the murder case of Intelligence Bureau officer Ankit Sharma during the February 2020 communal riots in north-east Delhi.

The appeal against the trial court rulings was filed on August 24 and is expected to come up for hearing before the High Court in the coming week.

Hussain has sought the setting aside of the trial court’s judgment convicting him on July 13, as well as the sentencing order delivered on July 31. He argued in his petition that the trial court erred by relying on the statements of completely unreliable witnesses and individuals who did not witness the crime, while ignoring significant flaws in the prosecution's case.

In the appeal, Hussain claimed that the investigation against him was tainted from the very beginning and was designed to implicate him to satisfy public anger. He stated that the First Information Report in the case was ante-dated and ante-timed, asserting that no material investigation was carried out by the police until March 6, 2020, when he was arrested in a separate case.

Hussain further alleged that investigating authorities planted witnesses and manipulated statements of genuine eyewitnesses during the inquiry. He contended that the complaint forming the basis of the FIR was fabricated and that the actual perpetrators responsible for the murder have not been brought to book.

The trial court on July 31 sentenced Hussain alongside four co-convicts — Nazim, Qasim, Javed, and Anas — to life imprisonment for the murder of the IB officer. The prosecution had pushed for the death penalty for all five accused in the case; however, the trial court turned down the request for capital punishment, observing that the matter did not fall within the "rarest of rare" category.