Mumbai
A six-member panel comprising retired judges, bureaucrats and IPS officers led by Justice (retd) Madan Lokur will probe the "Delhi Riots of February 2020: Context, Events and Aftermath". The committee’s task is to create a contemporary record of acts of omission and commission around the riots, and their aftermath. The Committee, which was set up by the Constitutional Conduct Group, will formulate its own procedure and it will submit a final report twelve weeks after it starts functioning.
The committee’s terms of reference include inquire into the events that transpired before and during the riots, including the response of the state machinery in dealing with the violence, restoring law and order, and related matters, to analyse and assess the response of the police in investigating the riots, to examine the role of the mainstream and social media in spreading information, both genuine and fake, before, during and after the riots, and its impact on events and to assess the civic administration’s efforts at providing relief and extending reparations to the victims of riots.
The committee comprises Justice AP Shah (Retd), Justice RS Sodhi (Retd), Justice Anjana Prakash (retd), GK Pillai, IAS (Retd) and Meera Chadha Borwankar, IPS (Retd).
"’Considering the horrific nature of the riots in North-East Delhi in February 2020, the scale of violence, the loss of lives and the resulting communal divide between communities, we felt that an expert body should carry out a thorough examination of what transpired before, during and after the riots. This has become even more necessary as the investigation carried out into the riots by the Delhi Police has evoked extensive critical commentary in recent times,’’ the Group said in a release on Sunday.
‘’We therefore concluded that a Committee with credible reputations in the higher judiciary, the civil service and the police would be best suited to contribute to an objective and fair understanding of the riots and their aftermath,’’ it added.
