New Delhi: A Delhi court on Friday sentenced former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Tahir Hussain to life imprisonment for the murder of Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer Ankit Sharma during the Delhi riots in February 2020.
The Karkardooma Court described the crime as a “very serious incident” which had shaken society.
Four others — Tahir Hussain, Nazim, Qasim, Javed and Anas – who were also convicted for murder, criminal conspiracy and other serious offences earlier this month, received death sentences as well.
“The manner of the crime was of utmost brutality,” the court said while announcing the sentence.
“The savagery did not end with the murder. His body was dragged into a drain nearby as if the hatred was still not satiated. The crime tilts towards the rarest of rare. The monstrosity of the crime also outweighs the mitigating circumstances.
“The final test is whether the convict is beyond redemption or not… Absence of individual role against the convicts are huge mitigating circumstances. The educational background and susceptibility and in the atmosphere of misinformation are mitigating circumstances,” the court said.
The 26-year-old Ankit, a security assistant with IB, was dragged by the mob and attacked with knives, sticks, rods and stones. The body was then dumped in a drain amid the violence that swept through northeast Delhi in end of February, 2020.
The body, which was found the next day, had at least 51 knife wounds.
Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra hoped the convicts’ life imprisonment will be converted to death penalty in high court.
“Tahir Hussain’s life imprisonment sentence is the beginning of justice. The cruelty with which Ankit Sharma ji was killed, stabbed with knives even after death, the body thrown into a drain – this is certainly the rarest of rare. It is hoped that in the high court, this life imprisonment will be converted to the death penalty,” Sharma wrote in a post on X soon after the sentencing.