Tahir Hussain. File.
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
Former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Tahir Hussain has approached the Delhi High Court challenging his conviction and life sentence for the murder of Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer Ankit Sharma during the February 2020 riots in north-east Delhi.
The appeal, which was filed on August 24, is likely to come up for hearing next week.
“The investigation against the appellant has been tainted since the very beginning, aimed at implicating him in order to satisfy public anger. The FIR is ante-dated and ante-timed, no material investigation was carried out until March 6, 2020, that is, till the appellant was arrested in another case,” Hussain contended.
He alleged that some witnesses were planted while statements of genuine eyewitnesses were “manipulated”, adding that the actual perpetrators have not been brought to book.
Hussain sought the setting aside of the trial court’s July 13 conviction order and July 31 sentencing order, contending that the trial court believed the statements of completely “unreliable witnesses” and relied upon those who did not witness the incident while ignoring the “tainted investigation”, including fabrication of the complaint on which the FIR was based.
On July 31, the trial court sentenced Hussain and four co-convicts — Nazim, Qasim, Javed and Anas — to life imprisonment for the IB officer’s murder. While the prosecution had sought the death penalty for all the accused, the court observed that the case did not fall within the “rarest of rare” category warranting capital punishment.
Published – August 27, 2026 04:43 am IST
