Dr.Qasim Rasool Ilyas

NEW DELHI – The Welfare Party of India (WPI) has strongly criticised the Delhi Police for naming the party’s national president, Dr SQR Ilyas, in their charge-sheet in connection with the February Delhi riots.

The party believes the police have done this with an intention to implicate Ilyas in the riots that rocked the north-eastern parts of the capital in February 2020.

In a statement, WPI national general secretary A.J. Siddiqui also raised strong objections at the shoddy investigations being carried out by the Delhi police, saying the investigating agencies had turned a blind eye toward the real culprits like Kapil Mishra, Mohan Singh Bisht, Jagdeesh Pradhan and others. Instead, they have named Ilyas and other innocent activists in the charge sheet, he said.

The charge-sheet claims that Ilyas had made a provocative statement. Rejecting the charge, Siddiqui said Ilyas was a prominent leader, a man of integrity and a patriot who strongly advocated unity in diversity.

Expressing dissatisfaction with the Delhi police which operate under the Union Home Minister, Siddiqui said those who had instigated and caused the violence in Delhi riots had not been arrested but innocent activists like Ilyas were being targeted whose only fault was that they exercised their constitutional right to dissent against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act.

Siddiqui said the party would take a legal course of action and expose all those who were intentionally maligning Ilyas’s image and reputation. He called it travesty of justice for falsely implicating him and other innocent activists to silence dissent and to suit their political narrative.

Siddiqui demanded that the name of Ilyas, as well as those of all such innocent activists, be immediately dropped from the charge-sheet and all charges against them be withdrawn.