Another arrest in a case that shook Delhi
Delhi Police have arrested Salman as another accused in the Ankit Sharma murder case, a central episode of the 2020 northeast Delhi riots that left the city scarred. The arrest was made on March 12, 2020, and adds to a growing roster of suspects charged with participating in the mob violence that led to the death of the young Intelligence Bureau officer.
Ankit Sharma went missing on February 25, 2020, at the height of the clashes in northeast Delhi. His father, Ravinder Kumar, reported him missing at Dayalpur police station the next day. Hours later, local residents alerted the family to a body in the Khajuri Khas drain near the Chand Bagh pulia mosque. Police recovered the body and said the post-mortem showed 51 separate injuries—evidence, investigators claim, of a brutal and targeted attack.
Police say Salman was part of a group that took part in rioting and arson in the area. His arrest follows a series of detentions and charge sheets that name several people, including former Aam Aadmi Party councillor Tahir Hussain, as key conspirators. Investigators allege the group mobilized crowds and used the chaos of the clashes to carry out violent attacks on residents, including Sharma. Defense lawyers for the accused have consistently denied these claims, saying their clients are being falsely implicated and were not present at the scene.
The riots, which began on February 24 after confrontations between supporters and opponents of the Citizenship Amendment Act, spread across several localities in northeast Delhi. The violence ran for days, leaving at least 53 people dead and many more injured. Streets in areas like Chand Bagh and Khajuri Khas turned into battlegrounds, with shops torched, homes vandalized, and residents fleeing as police and paramilitary forces tried to regain control.
What has kept public attention on this case is not only the scale of the riots, but also Sharma’s role as a serving Intelligence Bureau staffer and the manner of his death. The investigation has moved in stages, with police gathering witness statements, reviewing CCTV footage from nearby lanes, tracing call detail records, and analyzing movement patterns from mobile data. Forensic work tied to the post-mortem and scene examination has been central to the prosecution’s case. Each new arrest, including Salman’s, is being positioned by police as another step toward mapping the crowd, the chain of events, and individual roles within that crowd.
Here’s the timeline investigators and court filings have sketched so far:
- February 24, 2020: Clashes erupt in parts of northeast Delhi following tensions over the Citizenship Amendment Act.
- February 25, 2020: Ankit Sharma goes missing amid the violence.
- February 26, 2020: His father reports him missing at Dayalpur police station; a body is later found in the Khajuri Khas drain and identified as Sharma.
- March 12, 2020: Delhi Police arrest Salman as another accused connected to the killing.
Police have linked the murder to the wider riot cases, invoking sections related to murder, rioting, criminal conspiracy, and unlawful assembly, among others. In court, the prosecution has argued that the killing was not random but part of a pattern of coordinated violence. The defense has pushed back, stressing the chaos of the riots, gaps in identification, and the risk of mistaken identity in fast-moving, crowded scenes.
Witness accounts remain a sensitive point. Some testimonies place specific individuals at or near the drain and adjoining lanes; others talk about coordinated groups moving through the area. Lawyers on both sides have challenged the reliability of statements given under stress, the conditions under which identifications were made, and the need for corroboration from cameras or phone records.
The case has also moved through a long bail calendar. The Delhi High Court has been hearing bail applications from several accused, including Tahir Hussain, while keeping an eye on the pace of the investigation and trial. Judges have repeatedly underlined a basic principle: accusations are not proof, and the state must show material on record that specifically links each accused to the act in question. At the same time, the court has said serious charges and the gravity of the offense weigh heavily in bail decisions.
Where the case goes from here
With Salman’s arrest, investigators are expected to file or expand supplementary charge sheets to detail his alleged role, the evidence tying him to the scene, and how he fits into the broader sequence of events. The trial court’s next steps typically involve examining the fresh material, hearing arguments on framing of charges if pending for any accused, and moving to prosecution witnesses whose statements are central to the case theory.
Expect the following to shape the proceedings:
- Surveillance and digital trails: CCTV clips from Chand Bagh and Khajuri Khas lanes, call detail records, and movement logs may be used to place individuals in specific locations and time windows.
- Forensic corroboration: Injury patterns from the post-mortem, bloodstain analysis, and recovery memos from the drain and adjacent areas will be tested against witness statements.
- Chain of custody: Defense teams will scrutinize how evidence was collected, stored, and presented to rule out tampering or contamination.
- Consistency of narratives: Courts will look for alignment between the earliest complaints, FIRs, and later statements to assess reliability.
The wider context still matters. The 2020 riots produced dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries in a matter of days, overwhelming local hospitals and emergency services. Policing was stretched as multiple neighborhoods reported arson and clashes simultaneously. That scale makes every identification and every timeline detail a point of contention in court. Prosecutors argue that patterns across cases show coordination; defense lawyers counter that broad patterns cannot replace specific proof against specific people.
For Sharma’s family, the case has always been about clarity and accountability: who was there, who gave orders, who struck the blows, and who helped. For the courts, it’s about evidence that stands up to scrutiny. And for the police, each arrest—like Salman’s—is a claim that the picture is getting sharper. The trial will test that claim as witnesses return to the stand and the paper trail meets the evidentiary bar.
One thing is certain: this case remains a measure of how India’s justice system handles the hardest questions that arise when communal violence breaks out—questions about personal liability within a crowd, the weight of digital evidence, and the line between allegation and proof.
