Ex-AAP Leader Tahir Hussain And 4 Others Gets Life Imprisonment In Ankit Sharma’s Murder Case

A court in Delhi has pronounced its final sentence of life imprisonment on former AAP leader Tahir Hussain and four of its other accused persons on Friday in the murder of Intelligence Bureau officer Ankit Sharma. He was ruthlessly murdered in the 2020 riots in Northeast Delhi.

Hussain, Nazim, Qasim, Javed and Anas were sentenced to life imprisonment in the case as the Karkardooma court earlier this month had found them guilty of murder and other serious charges. The death penalty was not requested by the prosecution, the killing being “utmost brutality” and “nauseating and sickening” as it was committed for religious reasons only.

Reacting to the decision, Tahir Hussain said that he would challenge the conviction in the Delhi High Court and hoped that he would get justice there. “We will get justice from the High Court,” Hussain said after the sentencing. He further alleged, He also alleged that the trial was “a fixed match”, saying, “Ye match fixed tha. Insaaf milega toh High Court se milega.”

The court had pointed out that Sharma’s body was pulled “like that of an animal” to Chand Bagh Pulia before being dumped in a drain.

Delhi Police was seeking death penalty in the case and contended that it was a “rarest of rare” case. The court, however, has concluded that the prosecution failed to prove that the convicts had any prior criminal history or that they had a continuing pattern of violence. It noted that they might be corrected, and thus were not deserving of the death sentence.

Defence lawyer Abdul Gaffar Khan, representing one of the co-accused, also said that an appeal would be filed before the higher court in a week. He added, “I cannot speak for Mr Tahir Hussain, as I was not representing him; he was a co-accused in this matter. However, for the accused I represent, we will certainly file an appeal; we intend to do so within a week.”

In response to the decision, Delhi minister Kapil Mishra stated that the life sentence was just the start of justice and expressed hope that the High Court would increase the term. Mishra onX stated, ” “Life imprisonment for Tahir Hussain is the beginning of justice. The manner in which Ankit Sharma was killed, and the fact that his body was repeatedly stabbed even after his death before being thrown into a drain, certainly makes this a ‘rarest of rare’ case.”

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The tragedy took place during the violent rioti which broke out in northeast Delhi in February 2020. During the rioy, those accused brutally killed IB officer Ankit Sharma and his body was later found in a nearby drain.